_ THE NEW JAPANESE 
- WOMANHOOD 
Ras rend Ole FED 


| ALLEN K. FAUST 








THE NEW JAPANESE 
WOMANHOOD 


ALLEN K. FAUST, puH.p. 


BY THE AUTHOR 





Christianity as a Social Factor in 
Modern Japan 

(IN JAPANESE) 

The Great Enemy of Society— 


Tuberculosis 


Religious Pedagogy and Handbook for 
Sunday School Teachers 








MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS 


THE NEW JAPANESE 





WOMANHOOD ene 
Y 
BY NOVQ 1926 | 

ALLEN K.’FAUST, PH.D. Le oeay, seu 


President of Miyagi College, Sendai, Japan 


With Preface by 
WILLIAM E. LAMPE, pup. 


NEW oo YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


THE NEW JAPANESE WOMANHOOD 


— Ad 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


TO MY WIFE 


WHO HEARTILY REJOICES IN EVERY 
UPWARD STEP TAKEN BY 
JAPANESE WOMAN HOOD 


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PREFACE 


We who live in America or in European 
countries know too little regarding the women 
of Japan. Our own lives would be enriched by 
a fuller knowledge of these people. Japan was 
a closed country until 1854. Almost twenty 
years more passed before any considerable num- 
ber of people of the West visited Japan. The 
first Japanese women came to America early in 
the 70’s. Of the very small number of Jap- 
anese now living in America only a few thou- 
sands are women. Visitors tg Japan who have 
spent a few days or a few weeks there have seen 
Japanese women in the port cities, but have 
seen nothing of the real life of the Japanese 
women. Too often they have seen the kind of 
Japanese women who are not typical of Japan 
nor creditable representatives of the Japanese. 

Dr. Faust, the writer of this book, ““The New 
Japanese Womanhood,” has spent twenty-five 


years in residence in the northern part of 
vii 


Vill Preface 


Japan. For more than half of this period he 
has been President of Miyagi College, one of 
the largest and possibly the very best educa- 
tional institution for women north of Tokyo. 
What we need regarding Japanese womanhood 
is facts, not theory. Dr. Faust knows Jap- 
anese womanhood in all its phases and relation- 
ships. He writes of women from first-hand 
knowledge as also from the standpoint of a man 
in thorough sympathy with woman and her 
problems. His own educational training and 
his quarter of a century experience qualify him 
as almost no other person to write this book. 

Many factors have been at work to make the 
new Japan and to assist in the evolution of 
Japanese womanhood. This book will help 
many people to evaluate the influence of many 
factors that have had part in shaping the new 
Japan and the new Japanese womanhood. 
While it is a sound sociological study, it is writ- 
ten for the layman and the laywoman, and 
should be intensely interesting to both. 

This study of Japanese womanhood will be 
of immense value to people of the West in that 
it suggests and in some degree indicates what 
will happen in all of Asia and even in Africa. 


Preface ix 


The women of China have something of the 
same history and background as have the people 
of Japan. It may be only a few decades, but 
soon the women of China will be passing 
through the same stages as the women of Japan 
have passed or are now passing. The women 
of India will not remain in zenanas for many 
years; the women of the Near East will soon 
be leaving the harems; Japan is leading the 
Orient, but her women are asking whither? 


WILLIAM E. LAMPE. 
Philadelphia, Pa. 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I INTRODUCTORY Pe PAL Ae eR RR te I5 
TPIS OUD TURAL oN Ba Neen uence inane 21 

III MODERN EDUCATION FOR GIRLS... . aa 
IV ANCESTOR-WORSHIP, THE FAMILY SYSTEM, 

ATT RO MA NON erro oa Pee Geta 50 
VY INDUSTRY AND WOMAN’S NEW ROLE OUTSIDE 

PE at HOM By hice ttle er ae ern” Sa ting 66 
VI JA2SANESE WOMEN AND THE FINE ARTS. . 80 

VIT AWOMANTAND,; JAPANESE LAW. 04.) Voce... 00 

MItiee WOMANS ANT CPOLITICS |) tue cin patil ewe tear 
IX THE JAPANESE WOMAN IN SOCIETY. . . 125 


X ASPIRATIONS AND TRAGICAL CONSEQUENCES 139 
XI THE NEW JAPANESE WOMAN AKO unter ONAN 0 | 


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THE NEW JAPANESE 
WOMANHOOD 


CHAP VERS I 
INTRODUCTORY 


HE life of the Japanese woman is an 

enigma to most Occidentals. To write 
about her, while highly interesting, is uncom- 
monly difficult. Consequently her admirable 
qualities have not often been heralded to the 
outside world; moreover she, on her part, is 
entirely satisfied to remain unsung. ‘The pres- 
ent, however, seems to be an opportune time for 
the people of the West to become more inti- 
mately acquainted with Japan’s “‘better half.” 
It may very well be that, in spite of Kup- 
ling’s dictum, the twain—East and West— 
may after all meet through the modest charm 
of Japan’s daughters, who are fast becoming 
positive factors in the development of a new 


world for themselves. 
15 


16 The New Japanese Womanhood 


Some of our people seem to find pleasure in 
clinging to the old topsyturvydom and other 
oddities of the Nipponese, though it is well 
known that these Yankees of the Far East have 
eliminated much of the strangeness which for a 
long time has furnished entertainment to the 
West. These persons apparently desire that 
Japan should not change, but should continue to 
be “great in little things and little in great 
things.” This desire is possibly somewhat akin 
to that of the mothers who want their babies 
always to remain babies. 

Perhaps a partial reason for the continuance 
of our peculiar love for the antique in Japan, 
may be found in the highly colored advertise- 
ments of some agencies that are directly bene- 
fited by making people believe that the feudal 
quaintness and the general “upsidedownness”’ 
of former times still continue in their original 
fascination. Another cause may doubtlessly 
be found in the immense crop of books on 
Japan, written by professional globe-trotters 
who stay in the country a week or at longest a 
month. It must be from such sources that 
some enthusiasts get the fantastic ideas that 
all Japanese banks employ Chinese clerks, that 


Introductory 17 


Japanese children never cry, that the dancing- 
girls are paragons as ladies, and that the ordi- 
nary womer. are hopelessly stupid. 

Some good books have been written about 
the women of Japan, but most of these appeared 
about twenty-five years ago. Moreover the 
object of these books was largely description, 
and they were written too long ago to trace 
the development that is now going on among 
Japanese women. Dr. Charlotte B. DeForest, 
however, in her recent book, “The Leaven in 
Japan,” has very admirably presented the edu- 
cational and the religious phases of woman’s 
life in modern Japan. 

It has been said that the Japanese woman 
was man-made and that in this case the creature 
excelled its creator. To the credit of both the 
Japanese man and the Japanese woman it should 
be said that the woman of Japan has always 
been less of a slave than most of her Asiatic 
sisters. Her social status is clearly lower than 
the man’s; but until quite recently, she never 
counted this as a disadvantage or a disgrace. 
She has always found real joy in doing what 
was hers to do and in being what she was ex- 
pected to be. It was hers to toil unnoticed, but 


18 The New Japanese Womanhood 


she did this with pleasure and with no desire 
to change her position. She was satisfied with 
her lot. Her object in life was to please her 
husband and be a self-forgetting, self-sacrific- 
ing mother to her children. 

The Japanese woman is a woman of ex- 
traordinary merit, though her virtues have al- 
ways been largely passive. Lafcadio Hearn 
thinks that she is ethically quite different from 
the Japanese man; that all her self-assertion is 
repressed and the personality clipped. He 
speaks of her as, “A being working for others, 
thinking for others; a being incapable of selfish- 
ness and yet very courageous; her existence was 
a religion, her home a temple, her very word 
and thought ordered by the law of the cult of 
the‘deade: 

The twentieth century has brought disturb- 
ing influences into this quiet, submissive, 
hemmed-in, yet happy life. The emancipation 
of the women of America and Europe, the 
higher education which many of the Japanese 
girls now are receiving, the new economic life 
that has been forced on the women, and the 
more tolerant attitude of many of the Japanese 
men themselves, are some of the forces that 


Introductory 19 


have set in motion the rapid changes in the 
life of the Japanese woman. It is an intensely 
interesting fact that in ‘the last twenty-five 
years as much change in the condition of 
Japan’s women was made as it took Europe five 
hundred years to bring about. 

The present writer’s twenty-five years of life 
in inland Japan, thirteen of which have been 
spent as the head of a college for young Japan- 
ese women, have afforded him the opportunity 
of seeing Japanese home-life at first hand, and 
this experience has now induced him to write 
about the status of woman and its more im- 
portant changes that have taken place during 
the first quarter of the twentieth century. 

It should be kept in mind that the expression 
“the new womanhood of Japan” as used in the 
following chapters does not have the same con- 
notation as the rather unsavory “new woman” 
has in America. The difference or similarity 
between the status of Oriental and Occidental 
women will be but little discussed. The pur- 
pose is to state facts rather than to make com- 
parisons; to show progress, not as compared 
with other women, but as compared with the 
Japanese woman herself. The effort will be 


20 The New Japanese Womanhood 


made to draw a cross section of the Japanese 
woman’s life, with a view to bring out as dis- 
tinctly as possible the upward curve of her 
development. 


CHAPTER II 
THE OLD IDEAL 


ONFUCIANISM and _ ancestor-worship 
have supplied the major part of the basic 
religious and moral ideas of the Orient. Un- 
less a person has some conception of the pro- 
found influence which these have wielded and 
are still wielding on every phase of life in 
Japan, he will not be able to form an adequate 
idea of why society is organized as it is. Need- 
less to say, Confucianism and ancestor-worship 
teach many excellent virtues, but their ideal for 
woman is decidedly not one of these. The an- 
cestors that are worshiped are never women, 
always men. In Japan, there is divine right 
of men. Through the fiat of Nature, it is 1m- 
possible to get along racially without the aid of 
woman as a means, but the male is considered 
the main object of the human family. Tradi- 
tionally, woman has been regarded as a para- 
site and a social debtor who must be supported 


entirely by the men. 
ot 


29) The New Japanese Womanhood 


It is a notable fact that before the teachings 
of Confucius had obtained full sway in Japan, 
woman’s position was markedly higher than 
afterwards. Japanese historians present many 
facts that confirm the truth of this statement. 
They point with pride to the Empress Jingo, 
who was not only a great ruler but also the 
famous conqueror of Korea. At any rate, after 
Confucian ethics had taken possession of the 
hearts of the intelligentsia, the Japanese woman, 
as compared with the man, became a slave in 
everything but in name. Confucianism defi- 
nitely teaches that women are inferior to men; 
that they must obey the men; that the woman 
should have no voice in selecting her husband, 
the families concerned to do the selecting; that 
the husband is to have absolute right to rule the 
wife; that the proper social distinctions between 
husband and wife be strictly observed. 

Kaibara, a famous Confucian scholar and 
writer of Japan’s middle ages, called indocility, 
discontent, slander, jealousy and silliness, on the 
part of women, the worst possible maladies. 
Women are rigidly required to be sexually pure, 
while no such restrictions are laid on men. 
Hence, Confucianism, it is easily seen, is pro- 


The Old Ideal 23 


ductive of one morality for men and a very 
different one for women. 

It is very interesting to see how this old ideal 
expressed itself in numberless social habits and 
customs. Ancient Japan in conformity with 
all Asiatic peoples, did not wait until children 
were grown up to show that the male was su- 
perior to the female. If the newly-born child 
was a boy, the mother took him to the shrine on 
the thirty-first day of his life. If the newcomer 
had the misfortune of being a girl, this dedica- 
tion could not be performed until the thirty- 
third day of her life. The ancient Hebrews, 
according to Leviticus 12: 1-5, emphasized this 
difference still more than the Japanese. If a 
Jewish son was born the mother could be puri- 
fied in thirty-three days, but if a daughter was 
added to the family, sixty-six days were re- 
quired for the mother’s purification. 

The ancient wedding-dress of the Japanese 
woman was white, because white among Shin- 
toists was the color for mourning and always 
signified purity. Marriage of a daughter really 
meant the same as death so far as her relation 
to the family of her birth was concerned. When 
she left her father’s home to become the wife of 


24. The New Japanese Womanhood 


the son of some other family, all parental rela- 
tion was cut off. She became the absolute pos- 
session of the family of her husband. The 
white wedding garment was to express sorrow 
to the family in which she was born and it sig- 
nified to the family of her husband the assent of 
the parents and daughter to her new life rela- 
tionship. Besides the white kimono, there were 
at least two changes of costumes made by the 
bride during the wedding feast which followed 
immediately after the ceremony. One of these 
kimono was a ceremonial dress, which sym- 
bolized that the wearer had all-important reli- 
cious offices in the new home. The third cos- 
tume was a working dress, signifying that the 
bride was to assume the many duties of the 
household. The bride entered the new family 
for weal or woe. She could never of her own 
accord sever the bonds by which she was bound, 
though her husband’s family could send her 
back to her former home on the slightest 
provocation. 

The obi or sash was the sign of the woman’s 
chastity. Thus this beautiful part of a Jap- 
anese woman’s costume was more than mere 
art. Often it was used by the wife as a means 


The Old Ideal 25 


of committing suicide when her chastity was 
doubted by the husband. A new bride usually 
was provided with a short dagger which was 
to be used by her as an instrument of self-de- 
struction in case she was dishonored. This 
heroism was the supreme proof to the husband 
of the wife’s faithfulness. 

The Japanese wife of former days was re- 
quired to blacken her teeth with a certain chemi- 
cal preparation and keep them black all her 
married life. Jealousy of the male was very 
probably the original reason for this odd cus- 
tom. This was a mark which showed that 
the woman had entered the married state, and, 
at the same time, it also relieved her of some of 
her beauty, thus making her less a target for 
the eyes of men other than her husband. In 
the country districts this custom is still some- 
what in vogue, though its ancient meaning is 
now hardly known even by those who practice 
it. 

The married woman had also a very specific 
way of performing her coiffure. The long hair 
had to be put up in a marumage, which is a 
round chignon worn on the back of the head. 
The marumage signified not only marriage but 


26 The New Japanese Womanhood 


also meant absolute submission on the part of 
the wearer to her husband’s family. With 
blackened teeth in her mouth and a marumage 
on the back of her head, the new bride’s do- 
mestic position, as well as the niche she was 
to occupy in the social organization, was at 
once as clear as noonday to all who saw her. 
It was for her the unpardonable sin if thought- 
lessly or for any reason whatever she forgot 
the exact place that was hers to fill. 

Custom also, even to this day, requires a 
woman to show her age by the kind of dress 
goods she uses. As the years increase, the de- 
sign on the goods must decrease in size. If 
the material is striped, the stripes must get 
narrower as the wearer is getting along in 
years. 

If the wife through the death of her hus- 
band was made a widow, she was expected to 
show her loyalty to him by bobbing her hair. 
This was a definite sign and vow that she would 
die a widow. The widower, on the other hand, 
almost always married again, from three weeks 
to a year elapsing before he chose another 
mate. But for the Japanese widow with bobbed 
hair there was no second marriage. If a widow 


The Old Ideal 2G 


in the Occident nowadays should bob her hair, 
it would very probably have the very opposite 
signification. 

Instead of the handshake and the kiss as 
forms of greeting, the Japanese people use the 
o-jigt, a deep bow. Men, women, and children 
spend a great deal of time in bowing to each 
other. It must be done slowly and with ex- 
treme dignity. The significant point of bow- 
ing, as far as the woman is concerned, is that 
society requires that she bow oftener than the 
man and much deeper. As the bow is really a 
form of worship, the deeper bow of the woman 
to the man clearly suggests the inferior posi- 
tion that she holds. Most Japanese men are ex- 
ceptionally polite, but in going through a door 
or a gate they do not say aprés vous to their 
wives,—they go through first, and the women 
are quite satisfied that the men should do so, 
for they feel extremely uneasy if circumstances 
compel them to break this rigid custom. 

As is true in most countries, the men and the 
women of the lower strata of society consider 
themselves much more nearly equal than is the 
case higher up. The coolie woman and the 
coolie man stand much more nearly on the same 





28 The New Japanese Womanhood 


level than is the case with their social superiors. 

The polite Japanese word for wife in the mid- 
die class commoner and above, is okusama, the 
lady of the back parlor. To understand the full 
meaning of this word, a person must remember 
that in a Japanese house the front room is occu- 
pied by the servants, and the mistress or oku- 
sama lives in the back part of the house. So 
far as outward form is concerned, the okusama 
rules the servants and has general charge of 
running the home. The servants must serve 
her in what would seem to an Occidental an 
abject manner. But there is an obverse side to 
this seeming honorable position of the mistress. 
The fact is that the back parlor excludes her 
almost totally from the intellectual, social and 
business life of her husband. She and her chil- 
dren live almost in a separate world from that 
of the master. 

In former times women in general were re- 
garded as ceremonially unclean. This fact is 
clearly shown in the customs that were formed 
in connection with the many sacred mountains 
of Japan. In order to preserve the sanctity 
of these mountains women were not allowed by 


The Old Ideal 29 


the priests to climb these holy places. This 
superstition has now died out. 

When circumstances make it necessary that 
a husband and his wife walk together on the 
street, they will not walk side by side. The 
husband will lead the way, and usually about 
six or eight feet behind him comes the wife, 
perhaps burdened down with whatever luggage 
the trip they are taking requires. There is 
an actual case on record where a kind-hearted 
man helped his wife to do the week’s wash- 
ing, and when the neighbors heard of this act 
they were so severe in their criticism that the 
man with the tender heart, in order to have 
any peace at all, had to move to another town. 

The samurai, the knightly class of Japan, 
have deservedly been given much praise by the 
world. In the age of Japanese seclusion, it 
was the samurai that advanced civilization as 
far as military ideas, moral ideas and educa- 
tional ideas were concerned. In these respects 
the knights of Japan compared very favorably 
with those of medizval Europe, but gallantry 
towards women was none of the virtues of their 
moral code. To show much concern for the 
fair sex, disqualified a man for being a true 


30 The New Japanese Womanhood 


samurat. Such conduct would reveal a disgust- 
ing weakness which might easily be the begin- 
ning of a decline in the spirit of absolute loyalty 
to his feudal lord. To allow a woman to come 
between a knight and his lord would be the 
height of treason. 

No matter where one turned, it was every- 
where evident that both the family and society 
desired that wives should totally erase them- 
selves and become merged parts of their hus- 
bands. This lesson in an informal way was 
taught the girls and women all the time. Even 
the more formal old type education for women 
had as its obvious object the docility, obedience 
and dependence of women. 

The ancient tea-ceremony was a most tedious 
affair. The materialistic proverb, “Time is 
’ could certainly not be applied to this 
slow, and to the European, meaningless disci- 
pline. But to make the women who went 
through this tea-ceremony patient, subdued and 
graceful no better exercise could have been de- 
vised. The whole of the old etiquette which 
was taught with such great care to women 
was a branch of study the object of which was 


money,’ 


The Old Ideal 31 


to train the learners to be gracefully self-effac- 
ing, and thus pleasing to the men. 

The villain in an old Japanese story or drama 
was nearly always a woman. It was not for 
men to be put in a position of disrespect even 
if such a character was but the figment of some 
writer’s imagination. 

The music of ancient Japan which women 
were privileged to learn was often quite diff- 
cult, but it was calculated to express passivity 
and resignation. Its minor key was to give 
vent to feelings that were sad and deep but 
which contained at the same time a spirit of 
resolution to make any required sacrifice. 
“Shikata ga nat,’ (it cannot be helped there- 
fore be resigned to your fate), expresses a very 
common feeling even in present-day Japan. 

Flower-arrangement was probably the most 
delightful course in the old system of education 
for women. In this study a love of nature 
and the instinctive appreciation of beauty in 
general were combined in an unusual way. 
While the final object of the discipline was to 
please others, the women who learned this in- 
teresting art were themselves elevated by it 
and received pure joy from it. 


32 The New Japanese Womanhood 


As we continue the study of Japanese life we 
shall find that parts of these ancient ideals for 
women are still upheld, but it is very obvious 
that a decided change is taking place in these 
things and that a quiet but not-to-be-turned- 
back movement against many of the former 
things is on foot in Japanese society. 


CHAPTER III 
MODERN EDUCATION FOR GIRLS 


APAN has one of the most effective educa- 
tional systems in the world. You might 
almost say that education is worshiped in 
Japan. Over ninety-nine per cent. of her boys 
and girls are in the elementary schools, and 
there is hardly any illiteracy among people who 
are fifty years old and younger. Because of 
the indiscriminate mixture of things Oriental 
and things Occidental in the present-day educa- 
tion for girls, there is necessarily a lack of co- 
ordination between school life and the life at 
home. Most schools now require that the stu- 
dents wear leather shoes, but at home no one 
is allowed to wear shoes, as the mat-covered 
floors would not permit the rough treatment 
which shoes would give them. At home, all 
the members of the family sit on the floor, but 
in school, desks and seats are universally used. 


The great difference between the architecture 
33 


34. The New Japanese Womanhood 


of a dwelling-house and that of a school-build- 
ing makes it difficult to observe in the home the 
health education which is given in the school. 
This is especially true in the case of girls. The 
rather subdued part that they must take in the 
work of the home is not suitable for the applica- 
tion of the principles of gymnastics and ath- 
letics upon which the schools so rigidly insist. 

The girls’ kimono may be the proper thing 
for the home of the old style, but it is totally 
unsuited for modern school-work. Its im- 
mensely long sleeves interfere with the use of 
pen and pencil or blackboard crayon, and the 
fact that it is open in front does not permit the 
girls to engage in any active exercise without 
exposing their legs. To avoid this a specially 
made school-skirt, hakama, is required to be 
worn over the kimono by all school girls. It is 
evident, therefore, that in these external mat- 
ters the home and the school do not harmonize 
as well as might be the case. 

There is also a similar admixture of the old 
and the new in the purpose and content of edu- 
cation for Japanese girls. Ancient etiquette, 
ceremonial tea, and flower-arrangement are not 
so much called for now; but English, Western 


Modern Education for Girls 35 


music, and domestic science are eagerly sought 
by most girl students. The purpose of female 
education as expressed in the official textbooks 
on ethics, has, however, not been very much 
influenced by modern ideas. According to the 
fourth volume of Ethics for Girls’ High 
Schools, the duty of a woman is “to get mar- 
ried, to help her husband, to bring up children, 
to attend to housekeeping. She is to welcome 
her husband home with a gentle look, and cheer 
him up for the following day’s work. Her hus- 
band’s parents are hers. She must obey her 
mother-in-law.” 

This moral teaching is based on the Imperial 
Rescript on Education, issued in 1890. To the 
Japanese people this document is divinely in- 
spired. It states that the perfect morality has 
been handed down from the Imperial Ancestors. 
Among other things, it commands the Japan- 
ese people: “Be filial to your parents, affection- 
ate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands 
and wives, be harmonious; as friends, true; 
bear yourselves in modesty and moderation; 
extend your benevolence to all; pursue learning 
and cultivate arts, and, thereby develop intel- 
lectual faculties and perfect moral power; fur- 


26 The New Japanese Womanhood 


thermore, advance public good and promote 
common interests; always respect the constitu- 
tion and observe the laws. Should emergency 
arise, offer yourselves courageously to the state, 
and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of 
our Imperial Throne, coeval with Heaven and 
Earth.” 

The interpretation of these principles and 
their practical application to the life of the na- 
tion constitute the supreme and ever-present 
duty of all Japanese educators and statesmen. 

There is a much abused Japanese phrase, 
“Ryosat kembo,’ which means, good wife, wise 
mother. This is held up by the conservatives 
as the supreme ideal for woman’s education. 
The phrase is surrounded with a certain kind 
of sanctity, and when the modernist rudely 
invades its halo, the wonted clamorous scene is 
enacted by the reactionaries. But with every 
onslaught made by the advocates of the newer 
education, the voices of the Ichabod Cranes 
seem to grow slightly fainter. There are many 
women in Japan and some men, who believe 
that a woman should at least have the right to 
pursue an avocation along with her vocation 


Modern Education for Girls By 


of bringing children into the world and of being 
the passive angel of her master. 

Japan has made a thorough study of the co- 
educational system of education that is in vogue 
in the United States. The only element in this 
system that is attractive to her is the economic 
side of it. She has very grave doubts as to a 
desirable outcome, should she try this scheme. 
The main reason for looking askance at co-edu- 
cation is not the possibility of immorality be- 
tween the sexes. It is rather that Japanese 
men educators fear that co-education in the 
United States has had a tendency to neutralize 
the sexes so that a feeling akin to that existing 


- between brothers and sisters has been produced 


and that thus the number of marriages has been 
reduced and the birth rate unfavorably affected. 

Probably the women of no other country have 
ever set themselves a task of such stupendous 
proportions as have the progressive women of 
Japan, and none have ever attacked their prob- 
lems so quietly and so wisely. There will be no 
militant suffragettes, no “hatchet” affairs, and 
no smashing of show-cases as ways of express- 
ing the equality of women and men. The 
method of procedure is far less boisterous but 


38 The New Japanese Womanhood 


very probably quite as effective. In an unas- 
suming manner the women of Japan are most 
ardently striving to get an education equal to 
that given to the men and, as will be shown in 
subsequent chapters, they are on all sides en- 
tering the world of industry and commerce. 

It is quite impossible to describe fully the 
tremendous demand for higher education on the 
part of the young women. The government is 
giving heed to this demand, to a certain extent, 
by establishing many new high schools for girls. 
The number of qualified applicants for these 
high schools is from three to six times as large 
as the number that can be accommodated. The 
only way to be admitted to these schools is by 
rigid competitive entrance examinations. Grad- 
uation from the high school ends the education 
of most girls, for with the exception of two 
normal colleges for women, the government has 
no ordinary colleges into which graduates of 
high schools can be admitted. The Imperial 
University at Sendai has admitted two or three 
women students, but the Department of Edu- 
cation seems in this matter to be acting on the 
principle of “watchful waiting.” 

There are at present six or seven private col- 


Modern Education for Girls 39 


leges for women, but these institutions are not 
permitted to bestow any degrees on their grad- 
uates. This privilege is reserved to the Im- 
perial Universities. 

The point in the Japanese woman’s move- 
ment that is most interesting and fullest of 
meaning is the conflict between the desire on the 
part of the young women for higher education 
and the age-long demand by society that women 
should marry young and become the mothers 
of many children. This conflict at times reaches 
a state of white heat and is causing not a few 
heartburnings. 

Recently a case came before the public, in 
which the daughter of a certain family was 
preparing herself to enter one of the private 
colleges. She was more than happy in the pros- 
pect of getting a higher education. <A few 
weeks before the opening of the school year she 
wrote to the president of the college, “I must 
go bride,” “I must go bride.” The import of 
this quaint but exceedingly expressive English 
was clear enough. While the daughter was pre- 
paring herself to go to college her parents were 
busy selecting a young man to be the husband 
of their daughter. The parents won in the race, 


40 The New Japanese Womanhood 


and the girl was literally “driven to matri- 
mony.” This, however, is not the end of the 
battle, it is merely the beginning of it. The 
final victory will have been won when the 
daughters of this coerced mother will graduate 
from the colleges of their day. There are thou- 
sands of cases similar to this one; but there 
are also instances in which the girls win out. 
Some of these gain their point by the effective 
way in which they use their feminine tears in 
the presence of the fathers. The ways are le- 
gion and the result is that the number of girls 
entering colleges is fast increasing. 

Turning now to the grade and extent of 
education, it is to be noted that the school sys- 
tem of Japan, like that of every other country, 
consists of elementary schools, secondary 
schools, and universities. During the first six 
years of the elementary schools, attendance is 
compulsory for both boys and girls, and the 
grade of work for the two sexes is exactly the 
same. The high schools, prefectural normal 
schools, and vocational schools admit students 
upon the completion of these six years of work 
in the elementary school. There is a so-called 
higher elementary school for the 7th and 8th 


Modern Education for Girls 41 


grades, but this school is not very popular, be- 
cause most of the pupils are children who have 
failed in the entrance examinations for the high 
schools. 

The high schools usually have a course of 
four years, though some of them have a five 
year course. The sexes are strictly separated 
in the high schools. The grade of the girls’ 
high schools is distinctly lower than that for 
the boys. It is evident from official statistics 
that the salaries also of the principals and 

_teachers of the girls’ high schools are lower 
’ than those of boys’ high schools. The discrimi- 
nation against girls in the matter of educational 
facilities begins the moment they leave the ele- 
mentary schools. Not only are the girls’ high 
schools of a lower grade than those established 
for the boys, but excepting the Higher Normal 
Schools at Tokyo and at Nara there is as yet 
no way open to young women to continue their 
education above the high school in government 
institutions. The educational system for young 
women ends either in a blind alley or in 
matrimony. 

It should be noted that prefectures and cities, 

as well as private persons, are conducting many 


42 The New Japanese Womanhood 


girls’ schools of the vocational type. Such in- 
stitutions specialize in domestic science, indus- 
trial education, commercial education, nurses’ 
and midwives’ training, dentistry, and medicine. 

There are about four millions of girls in the 
elementary schools and about 130,000 students 
in the 455 public and private high schools for 
girls. It hardly needs to be stated that the 
number of these schools and their students are 
rapidly increasing. 

The content of girls’ education is much 
wider than it is deep. It is almost unbelievable 
how many varied subjects are taught in the 
girls’ high schools. When one remembers that 
of the total of the ten or eleven years schooling 
which a high school graduate receives, it takes 
almost three years to master enough Chinese 
characters to pursue the course to the end, the 
wonder is that because of this excessively heavy 
work not more students succumb to tuberculosis 
than is the actual case. The course in the high 
school is entirely fixed and required. The new 
students do not need to worry about electing 
studies,—that is all done for them by the au- 
thorities. 

The first branch to be noted in the curric- 


Modern Education for Girls 43 


ulum as fixed by the Department of Education, 
is that of morals. This is taught throughout 
the whole course of four years. The object of 
this branch is to teach the girls what a good 
Japanese woman is, what her duties are. Not 
much is said about any rights. In general, the 
morality taught is based on loyalty and filial 
piety and is decidedly conservative in tendency. 
Etiquette is a regular branch in all girls’ high 
schools. In material it is related to morals as 
it insists that girls should manifest a good heart 
and pure motives in daily behavior as well as in 
the use of language and in social intercourse. 
The Japanese language and its literature are 
properly stressed in the curriculum. The aim 
is to give the students power to understand 
literature, to develop the ability to express 
thought correctly, and to form a literary taste. 
In this way it is expected that the intelligence 
will be enhanced and a broad character formed 
in the students. Chinese literature as taught 
in the Japanese schools takes somewhat the 
place of Latin in Occidental schools; but there 
is a still closer relation between Japanese and 
Chinese than between English and Latin. Only 
the classical Chinese is used in this study. Eng- 


44 The New Japanese Womanhood 


lish is taught in all high schools, and relatively 
much time is spent on this modern language. 
The aim is to have the student acquire a reading 
knowledge of English, though conversation is 
also given in the majority of schools. 

Penmanship necessarily receives a great deal 
of emphasis. The object is to learn to write 
the Chinese and the Japanese characters cor- 
rectly and with speed, and to acquire the ability 
to use the writing-brush with artistic results. 
The students by writing these ideograms will 
also remember their meaning. The square, the 
semi-cursive, and the cursive styles of writing 
the characters are taught. 

History includes the ancient, medieval and 
modern periods of Japanese history and the 
history of Oriental countries other than Japan. 
The salient points of Western history are also 
contained in the text book. The field covered 
in history seems to be too wide to give the stu- 
dents much more than a smattering of this 
branch of study. In geography, the physical, 
political, and commercial aspects of the subject 
are studied. 

Mathematics in these schools consists of 
arithmetic, algebra, and plane geometry. The 


Modern Education for Girls 45 


natural sciences are botany, zoology, physics, 
chemistry, physiology and hygiene. A great 
deal of ground is covered in science. But as 
the high school is the most advanced school 
open to these students, and as an intelligent 
person ought to know at least something about 
the natural sciences, the Department of Educa- 
tion sees fit to offer the students a little of many 
sciences rather than much of a few. 
, Drawing is in the curriculum of all Japanese 
“ schools. There is no doubt that more real art 
is taught in the Japanese schools than in the 
schools of any other country. The teacher does 
not only insist on having the students draw the 
pictures carefully but he also endeavors to in- 
spire in the minds of the girls noble ideals of 
beauty. Free-hand drawing, especially of scen- 
ery, is much encouraged. The art of music is 
not neglected in Japanese schools. It is much 
more difficult for the students than drawing, 
but it is faithfully taught. Vocal music is a 
required study in all girls’ high schools, and in- 
strumental music usually is optional. 
Domestic science is considered an important 
branch in this grade of schools. The course 
aims to give the students a knowledge of do- 


46 The New Japanese Womanhood 


mestic economy and to train the future house- 
wives in thrift, work, orderliness, accuracy and 
cleanliness. The subjects covered are clothing, 
food, the house, the rearing of children, house- 
hold management, sick-nursing, and home eco- 
nomics. Sewing is treated as a_ separate 
branch in domestic art, to which four or six 
hours a week for four years of the course, are 
devoted. Sewing by hand and by machine, cut- 
ting, the nature of materials, matching of pat- 
terns, fancy-work, embroidery, instruction in 
washing, starching, and ironing constitute the 
principal parts of the work in this practical 
study. 

Physical education is faithfully and effec- 
tively taught throughout the course. It includes 
theory, but more especially general gymnastics 
and games, outdoor exercises and athletics, in- 
cluding drills, running, jumping, tennis, basket- 
ball, hockey, mountain climbing, swimming and 
field sports. The Japanese students are quick 
and agile, and it is notable with what success 
they are engaging in all forms of physical edu- 
cation. It is only too obvious that they need 
to improve their physique. Physically, the Jap- 
anese are smaller than Occidentals, and the 


Modern Education for Girls 47 


women are much smaller than the men. The 
average height of the adult Japanese woman is 
four feet, eight and a third inches, and her 
weight is 122 pounds. One more peculiarity 
of the Japanese woman is that she ages quite 
early. At thirty-five many of the women seem 
old. This involves a very serious problem, but 
the new education of the body is surely doing 
wonders. When young girls and their mothers 
are walking together on the street it is very 
evident that the daughters have a much finer 
physique than the mothers have ever had. 

There is hardly any objection made to this 
enthusiasm for Western athletics. The old 
idea that grace is found in weakness is being 
driven out of Japan. Japan knows that if she 
desires to have strong sons she must first have 
strong mothers. 

Some time ago, the following editorial ap- 
peared in the Asahi, the leading Tokyo daily: 
“Tt is a welcome sign that baseball which has 
hitherto been a game for boys exclusively is 
finding favor in some girls’ schools, and that 
athletic meets for women are being organized 
on a grand scale. We think it necessary that 
this tendency should be fostered and guided 


48 The New Japanese Womanhood 


wisely so as to contribute to the reconstruction 
of the physique of Japanese womanhood.” 

It is a praiseworthy fact that the Depart- 
ment of Education of Japan is putting strong 
emphasis in about equal measure on the mental, 
the moral, and the physical sides of the educa- 
tion of her young men and young women. 

In justice to the Christian (Mission) girls’ 
schools in Japan, it should be stated that Chris- 
tianity brought the girls’ high school to Japan 
as early as 1870. Before that time there was 
no school of this grade in all Japan. For about 
twenty years these Mission schools were lead- 
ing in this kind of education. Later on, the 
first college for women, too, came from the 
same source. ‘These facts are gratefully ad- 
mitted by all the leading Japanese educators. 
At present, about one-tenth of all the girl stu- 
dents in the high schools and colleges are found 
in Christian schools. It is also a fact that the 
Christian girls’ schools first popularized the 
organ and the piano in Japan. Moreover these 
educational institutions gave a great impetus to 
the study of English as the most important for- 
eign language. Western domestic science was 
largely promoted by this type of school, and so 


Modern Education for Girls 49 


was the great necessity for the physical educa- 
tion of the girls. Without taking into consid- 
eration the decided influence of the Christian 
schools in Japan, it is quite impossible to account 
properly for the educational progress that has 
been made among the women. 


CHAPTER IV 


ANCESTOR-WORSHIP, THE FAMILY SYSTEM, 
AND WOMAN 


HE worship of ancestors has probably 
been practiced by all the races of men at 

some time in their history, as evident traces of 
it are found in the Old Testament and in the 
sacred writings of almost all ancient peoples. 
It is very probably within the realm of fact to 
say that the United States is the only country 
where to-day this religious practice is not found. 
As there is an intimate relation between feudal- 
ism and ancestor worship, it is not strange to 
find that in Japan, where feudalism was offi- 
cially abolished only some fifty-two years ago 
and where the general atmosphere still is rather 
feudalistic, ancestor-worship should be the very 
cornerstone of society. Confucianism, Bud- 
dhism, and Christianity came to Japan from 
without, ancestor-worship alone is indigenous. 


No one who does not have a true knowledge 
50 


Ancestor-Worship 51 


of the Japanese and sympathy with them is able 
to interpret with any degree of fairness the 
ancient religious ideas of this profoundly reli- 
gious people. 

The Japanese word Chuko contains the es- 
sence of both morals and religion. This word 
is made up of two Chinese characters, Chu and 
Ko. Chu means loyalty to the Emperor, even 
the worship of him. Ko means filial piety on 
, the part of the children to the father and the 
worship of the father’s ancestors. There is 
no moral conflict between allegiance to the Em- 
peror and the worship of one’s ancestors, for 
the Emperor is conceived of as the father of 
all Japanese. Dr. Charlotte B. DeForest in 
The Leaven in Japan calls the virtues of loy- 
alty and filial piety perpendicular virtues, as 
the relationships represented are those holding 
between superiors and inferiors. 

As has already been intimated, ancestor- 
worship traces relationship in the male line 
only, the mother’s line of ancestry being com- 
pletely swallowed up in the father’s. The only 
seeming exception to this rule appears when 
there are no sons in a family, and a daughter 
must carry on the family line. The parents 


52 The New Japanese Womanhood 


of such a daughter seek out some marriageable 
man who is willing to change his name to that 
of his wife’s family name. The ancestors to 
be worshiped seem to accept worship from the 
offspring of such a union just as though the 
adopted husband were a real descendant. It 
is quite easy to understand that the family sys- 
tem built on this religion could not think of 
women as the equals of men. 

Woman is clearly a dependent who makes her 
lot bearable by tact and kindness to her hus- 
band and the others above her—her oldest son 
and her mother-in-law. Inherently the Japan- 
ese woman is modest to the point of servility, 
always working for others. If she did not have 
these virtues she could not be faithful to the 
supreme duty which ancestor-worship lays upon 
her,—the giving birth to ancestor worshipers. 
Marriage does not directly consider the happi- 
ness of the man and woman concerned. It is 
first and foremost the means of perpetuating 
the worship of the husband’s ancestors. Noth- 
ing could be more unfilial than to be without 
posterity. Indeed, this is the unforgivable sin 
against the spirit of the ancestors. The dead 


Ancestor-Worship 53 


and those about to die rule the living with an 
iron hand. | 

As marriage is a social and religious neces- 
sity it cannot be left to the free choice of the 
two youthful persons immediately concerned; 
and since love before marriage is looked upon 
with grave suspicion by the elders, there is no 
courtship and very little romance in the life 
yof a Japanese young woman. The family is 
under obligation to select the partners that are 
suitable for its sons and daughters. For this 
purpose a very complicated but efficient system 
of match-making has been evolved. The “go- 
between,” as the match-maker is called, is ap- 
pointed by the parents, and he is supposed to 
work in the interests of the family that employs 
him. He makes a very careful investigation 
into the history of such young women as seem 
suitable for the young man whose family he is 
serving. Is the family of the samura: or com- 
moner class; is there the possibility of any “bad 
blood,” namely leprosy, in the family; any in- 
sanity; any tuberculosis; is the young woman 
chaste; are the family customs such that there 
would not be any conflict; has there been any 
serious crime in the family history; is the girl 


54. The New Japanese Womanhood 


properly humble, obedient, hard-working; does 
she know how to sew, cook, take care of chil- 
dren; will she know how to serve and obey her 
husband and to be pleasantly subject to her 
mother-in-law? To these, and many other 
questions a faithful go-between has to ferret 
out answers in secret detective style. On the 
other hand, it is, of course, his duty to hide 
adroitly all the possible defects that the young 
man (or young woman) he represents mdy 
have. Fortunately there is one way by which 
the girl under examination has some redress. 
Her family also, doubtlessly, has a go-between 
out on the war-path, or perhaps better love- 
path; and if the parents truly care for their 
daughter, they will see to it that the young man, 
so highly recommended by his own go-between, 
will get a similar third-degree investigation be- 
fore a marriage is consummated. The go- 
betweens are held strictly responsible for the 
success or failure of the marriage. 

Before the wedding ceremony takes place, the 
man and woman concerned are allowed, in a 
very formal manner, to see each other once. 
If there is nothing intolerable between the two, 
presents are exchanged between the two fami- 


Ancestor-Worship 55 


lies. These presents usually consist of an obt 
(sash) or ring from the man to the woman, and 
silk is often the present from the woman to the 
would-be husband. 

No license is required for the marriage. The 
ceremony is purely social, or rather, domestic, 
usually performed in the groom’s home. No 
priest or justice of the peace is required. It 
consists in the sipping of saké (rice wine) from 
the same three cups three times each by the 
groom and the bride in the presence of the go- 
between and his wife and a girl who acts as 
cup-bearer. Of recent years in the larger 
cities, some bridal couples go to certain famous 
shrines to pledge faithfulness to each other and 
to pay vows to the ancestors. 

The marriage is legalized by reporting it to 
the proper authorities and by erasing the 
woman’s name from her family register and 
changing it to that of her husband, and then 
adding it to the husband’s family on the official 
register. The parents send their daughter to 
the new family with this injunction: “You now 
have no home except your husband’s.” 

As already noted, the success of a marriage is 
not measured by the happiness of the man and 


56 The New Japanese Womanhood 


woman, but by whether or not there are chil- 
dren born to them. If no worshipers of the 
ancestors are produced, the marriage is reli- 
giously and domestically a failure. If daugh- 
ters only are born, the parents can remove this 
disadvantage by adopting a young man into the 
family, who will then marry a daughter. When 
a couple is entirely childless, adoption of both 
a boy and a girl is resorted to with the idea that 
at the proper age these will get married and 
perpetuate the family of their foster parents. 
The great sin of childlessness usually is charged 
to sterility in the wife. 

The ordinary Westerner simply cannot ap- 
preciate fully the bitterness of the anxiety that 
is the lot of a childless couple in Japan. One 
may form some little idea of their feelings by 
imagining their ancestral shades suspended 
somewhere in eternity anxiously awaiting the 
continued worship of their descendants on 
earth. If for any reason whatever, physical, 
moral, or religious, the line of posterity should 
suddenly cease to function, what an everlast- 
ing sorrow that would be to the shades in the 
other world! It is even supposable that other 
shades of other families whose descendants on 


Ancestor-Worship 57 


earth are supplying a numerous family of wor- 
shipers, might point the finger of derision at 
those who have a posterity that has become 
so demoralized as to be guilty of allowing the 
family line to die out. Besides this, there is 
the terrible fear that the dishonored shades 
might from yonder world wield the lash of 
condign punishment on the derelicts upon earth. 
Then, too, there would be formed in the mind 
of the patriot the dread picture of an ill fate 
to the Empire, if too many family lines should 
cease to be. 

There is much in ancestor-worship that is 
very highly regarded by many good people in 
the world; but, as often is the case in religion 
and philosophy, it suffers from the vices of its 
virtues. 

The fact that love between the sexes before 
marriage is regarded with universal disap- 
proval by parents has been the cause of an im- 
mense amount of misery and tragedy. And 
yet in spite of all the vigilance of the elders 
cases where young people fall in love are by 
no means rarein Japan. The long list of lovers’ 
suicides which this system has produced, is to 
say the least, a sad commentary on it. A very 


58 The New Japanese Womanhood 


common method of committing suicide under 
such circumstances is for the two lovers to 
tie themselves together with a rope or the 
woman’s obi, and then throw themselves in 
front of a moving express train. The love- 
crazed man and woman believe that this is the 
only way by which they can properly impress 
those who have opposed their marriage. An 
older method of self-destruction for lovers and 
others, was to throw themselves into the wells 
of those who refuse to sanction the union. 
The newest of all methods is to drink Nebo 
Irazu, “Rough on Rats.” The drug-stores of 
Japan are very strictly cautioned by the authori- 
ties not to sell this kind of poison to young 
people. 

The sad fact is that many of the young peo- 
ple allow themselves to be forced into a matri- 
mony that will be totally unhappy. To avoid 
this, elopement has been tried: but in Japan 
there is no place to which it is safe to elope. 
The runaways are always quickly brought back 
in much disgrace. 

Another by-product of this religious prac- 
tice is that it has always tended to make 
woman’s married state unstable. Sterility in a 


Ancestor-Worship 59 


wite was considered a social justification for di- 
vorce. If a wife could not bear any children 
the husband, not infrequently from religious 
motives, felt impelled to find one who would be 
able to give birth to worshipers. It ought to 
be stated in this connection that the divorce 
evil in Japan is steadily improving, only eleven 
per cent or less of the marriages now ending 
in divorce. In former days if it was incon- 
venient for the man to divorce his wife for this 
reason, concubinage offered another way of 
securing worshipers. It is now illegal to keep 
a concubine, but there are still many cases where 
this law is observed in the breach. 

The system of prostitution, of which so much 
has been written, has always found a rather 
dependable supporter, at least in an indirect 
way, in the family system. In Japan filial piety, 
as a virtue, stands above chastity. If it seems 
to be impossible to observe both of these virtues, 
it is in the case of a woman chastity that must 
be broken, according to the ancient code. When 
the family happened to be in financial straits, it 
sometimes became the duty of a daughter to 
sell herself to the brothels and with the money 
she received to save the family from ruin. The 


60 The New Japanese Womanhood 


unprincipled agents of the prostitute quarters 
were not slow to utilize this social idea in their 
efforts to entice poor girls, who thought they 
were doing a noble act by helping their families 
in this way. This custom has now been almost 
completely abolished. Only when very hard 
times or famine make their appearance, may 
such cases still be found. 

During a rice famine a certain missionary 
was called upon to contribute one dollar to- 
wards preventing a young girl from being sold 
into a house of shame. A Japanese social 
worker had found this girl in a railroad station, 
on her way to a Tokyo brothel. The amount 
of money required to free her from her obliga- 
tion was four dollars. The social worker had 
secured three dollars before, and now he ran 
four blocks to the missionary’s home to get 
the other dollar from him. The dollar was 
given, and in a short time the girl was brought 
to the missionary’s house. Later on, a suitable 
young man was found as a husband for her, 
and she is now living a good and useful life. 
The government is making honest efforts to 
prevent all such traffic in women, but in spite 


Ancestor-Worship 61 


of these endeavors the evil is not yet fully ex- 
terminated. 

There are very few bachelor maidens in 
Japan for the reason that such women have 
always been despised as lacking both in patriot- 
ism and filial piety. Before the present condi- 
tions in the industrial life existed, matrimony 
was the only possible career fora woman. An 
unattached female, until very recently, was con- 
sidered a calamity, if she was at all to blame for 
her unmated condition. 

The widow’s lot was only slightly better than 
that of her unmarried sister. The word for 
widow in Japanese is mibojin, which literally 
means “‘the-not-yet-dead-person.”’ Originally, 
this implied that the widow ought to have killed 
herself at the death of her husband so that she 
might have followed him to the other world to 
serve him there. By the fact that she is still 
living it is clear that she is unworthy of his 
memory. She was expected to look pale and 
dejected as if in unending but unexpressed sor- 
row for her departed mate. Her words must 
be happy and pleasant to those around her, but 
at heart she must pine away until the time when 
she may follow her husband. While a great 


62 The New Japanese Womanhood 


change has taken place in society’s attitude to- 
wards the widow the former ideal has not yet 
been altogether removed from the social con- 
sciousness. 

A woman experiences her greatest happiness 
in life when she is old and has a daughter-in- 
law in her house, who must obey her and work 
for her, and who respects her. There is in all 
this, on the part of the mother-in-law, a sort of 
an unholy revenge, for in her younger days she 
too had to serve an arduous apprenticeship as 
daughter-in-law. 

When all is said, ancestor-worship has a 
truly beautiful side to it. This is perhaps seen 
at its best in the kind of mother it has pro- 
duced. The Japanese mother, in the estima- 
tion of many people, is incomparably the best 
mother in the world. She is completely unself- 
ish. She lives for her children and her hus- 
band. She lavishes affection on her little ones 
and literally “dies daily” for them. As a rule, 
she is remarkably prolific and her creed seems 
to be, “Happy is the man that has his quiver 
full.” Motherhood is her crown and she wears 
it with joy. 

In Japan the birth rate is relatively very high, 


Ancestor-Worship 63 


but the death-rate is also very high. This latter 
condition is not caused by lack of care and 
concern on the part of the mother, but some- 
times by lack of knowledge; more frequently 
it is caused by lack of means and the sanitary 
conditions required to care properly for the lit- 
tle ones. While the children are small, but 
little punishment is administered by the par- 
ents and so one can see exceedingly naughty 
children in Japan. But the moment they be- 
come adults or near-adults the vise of the fam- 
ily system is applied to them with tremendous 
pressure, making disobedience almost impos- 
sible. A renegade from the authority of the 
family can find no place of rest day or night. 
The whole of society, good and bad, is against 
him. Therefore, Hamlet-like, he rather bears 
the ills he now has than fly into the jaws of 
others that will unquestionably be more griev- 
ous than the ones that now irritate him. 

This solidarity of the family has kept beg- 
gars, so prevalent in many other countries, prac- 
tically unknown in Japan. The family is reli- 
giously, domestically, socially, and legally re- 
sponsible for all its members, whether they be 
good, bad or indifferent. Even insane members 


64. The New Japanese Womanhood 


of the family—if there happened to be any— 
had in the past to be cared for privately in the 
family. This was an unfortunate effect of the 
system, because no private home is equipped to 
take care of insane people. Some shocking ex- 
amples of maltreatment of demented members 
of families are on record. The authorities have 
wisely stepped in and are fast establishing 
proper institutions for the incurably insane. 

One other praiseworthy by-product of the 
family system is the fact that no orphanages 
were needed in the Japan of the olden times. 
The orphans were reared in the family of the 
nearest relative just as carefully as the children 
born in the family. As all children normally 
ought to live in a family, and not in an institu- 
tion, these orphans were given the best possible 
preparation for life. But these things are also 
changing. Large orphanages have now become 
a necessity in Japan, and many children are 
cared for in institutions of this nature. 

Though the influence of ancestor-worship 
and the family system has been immensely pow- 
erful, the new world of influences is making sad 
havoc of it. Woman treated in an unfair way 
in many respects for ages is now beginning to 


Ancestor-Worship 65 


talk about rights. She would like to demand 
as much purity of life in her husband as he re- 
quires of her. In the larger cities matrimonial 
bureaus are now established where unmarried 
men and women can pay the required fee and 
put their names on the list, stating at the same 
time what kind of partners they desire. “While 
this method of finding a mate apparently gives. 
more freedom to the individual than the family 
method, it is doubtful whether the results are 
as good. The same must be said of the news- 
paper advertisements inserted by men and 
women who are seeking life partners. 

It is clear that if this family religion is to 
continue to have effective control over Japanese 
society, it must modify and readjust itself to 
an immense extent. Since its very nature is to 
worship the aad and the past, it is difficult to 
imagine how it can ever become the progressive 
force which twentieth century conditions as- 
suredly demand. 


CHAPTER: V 


INDUSTRY AND WOMAN’S NEW ROLE OUTSIDE 
THE HOME 


HE Japanese women’s new world of work 

was not sought by them. They are being 
forced out of their former station by the new 
industry and the new economics that have be- 
come the basic forces of society. Japan’s 
‘women have always been industrious. Work 
has been their life, and the word laziness surely 
is not to be found in their dictionary. For cen- 
turies they have been trained to serve others, 
and they have found joy in doing so. When 
the industrial revolution began in Japan and 
the need of willing workers became urgent, it 
was afi easy matter to persuade the women to 
offer their services in these new and untried 
fields of labor. Many thought they saw in this 
turn of circumstances a fine opportunity to be 
of practical help in the support of the family. 


Others seized this chance to become more inde- 
66 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 67 


pendent from the pressure of the old system, 
but none of them saw the possibility of any 
hidden dangers that might be lurking in this 
new life. They could not dream that their 
beautiful virtue of submissive obedience might 
possibly be abused by industrialism, where, it 
has been discovered, it is necessary that women 
in order to survive must be able to protect them- 
selves against the pitfalls of a selfish and heart- 
less world. 

The factories that sprang up were entered 
by hordes of women with such will and vigor 
that to-day there are more women workers of 
this kind than men workers. This is a unique 
industrial condition, possibly not found in any 
other nation. It was brought about on the one 
hand by the great desire of the women to im- 
prove their lot in life, and on the other hand 
by the employers, who coveted female workers 
because their labor could be bought at a much 
cheaper figure than the men’s. 

The female population of Japan is at present 
well over 25,000,000. Approximately one-half 
of this population is gainfully employed. Of 
this half, some eight millions are engaged in 
farm work and in the home. The remaining 


68 The New Japanese Womanhood 


four and a half millions or more are engaged 
in various forms of industrial, commercial and 
professional pursuits. The total number of 
women employed in factories is about I,250,- 
000, which is 60 per cent. of all the factory 
employees of both sexes. | 

The principal agricultural products of Japan 
are rice, tea and silk. The farmer women help 
a great deal in the raising of rice and do most 
of the work connected with the picking of tea 
leaves and the raising of silkworms. Of the 
workers in raw silk, seventy per cent. are 
women. It is a matter of peculiar interest that 
the world’s women provide the major part of 
the labor of the entire silk industry, beginning 
with the eggs of the silkworm on to the fin- 
ished hosiery and dresses. It is also women 
who wear by far the greater part of the gar- 
ments that are manufactured from this silk. 

The government of Japan employs more than 
twice as many women as men in its larger to- 
bacco factories. In the cotton spinning mills 
as large a proportion as 80 per cent. of all the 
employees are females. Some of the many other 
industries in which women contribute a large 
share of the labor are matting-weaving, dyeing, 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 69 


embroidery, brush making, match-box making, 
elass-working and printing. 

It is not creditable to Japanese society that 
some 80,000 women are reported as still en- 
gaged in coal-mining. The men dig the coal 
and the women carry it in baskets strapped to 
their backs, from the place where it is mined to 
the cars that take it away. This seems to be a 
death-dealing kind of work for women. The 
average wage paid to women for this burden- 
some labor is less than a dollar a day. Concern- 
ing this condition, Mrs. Margaret Wells Wood, 
in the Christian Movement, 1923, remarks: 
“The statistics of the number of still-born chil- 
dren and the appalling number of deaths of 
newly-born children in mining communities are 
an indication of the waste of life that is going 
on because of the employment of women at this 
dangerous work.”” Mrs. Wood found that some 
of the spinning, weaving and dyeing factories, 
where the great bulk of the workers are young 
women, reveal conditions that are as unfortu- 
nate as those that prevail in the coal mines. 

One is impressed, in the first place, by the 
youth of the female workers in these industries. 
Nearly two-thirds of the female employees are 


70 The New Japanese Womanhood 


under twenty, one-fifth of them are between 
twelve and fifteen, and a few are even less than 
twelve years of age. Only a few of these girls 
stay in the work for any length of time, about 
three-fourths of the female operatives being 
changed every year. Many of the girls take 
up this work with the definite hope of earning 
some money preparatory to their marriage. 
The wages paid range from twenty-five cents to 
a dollar a day. The cotton mills run twenty to 
twenty-two hours a day with two shifts, half an 
hour rest being allowed at noon and at mid- | 
night, and fifteen minutes at nine and at three 
o'clock. But there have been silk filatures that 
worked their girls seventeen hours a day, with 
only short rest periods at meal time. This has 
now been reduced in some cases to fourteen, 
and in others to sixteen hours a day. Some 
factories grant two holidays a month, others, 
four rest-days per month, and still others have 
their employees rest every Sunday, but when 
the trade requires it, some or all of these rest- 
days are withheld. Night work for women is 
still found in cotton mills where the operatives 
work by night on alternate weeks. It is ex- 
pected that the new factory law will improve 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 71 


this condition, but it has not yet become fully 
effective. 

In many factories the working conditions 
other than the long hours are unsatisfactory. 
All who have made special investigations of 
Japanese industries report that in many cases 
fast revolving machinery is unguarded and 
heavy machines are crowded into poorly built 
structures, for as yet there are no standards of 
factory construction. At many places the hu- 
man element seems to be ignored. This is said 
to be especially true where women are con- 
cerned, for there are still employers who do not 
consider them as having bodies and souls that 
must be respected and protected. 

If the safety of the women workers is often 
neglected by the proprietors, modern sanita- 
tion is not observed any more satisfactorily. 
Contagious eye diseases are prevalent and so 
are venereal diseases. ‘Tuberculosis, in the cot- 
ton factories, is such a scourge that, in some 
cases, from twenty-five to thirty per cent. of 
the operatives are suffering from it. There are 
23,000 factories in Japan, and according to a 
recent report, less than twenty-three of them 
have resident physicians. 


72 The New Japanese Womanhood 


The early inauguration of the so-called “dor- 
mitory system” in Japanese industry is some- 
thing new in the factory world. In order to 
get cheap factory sites where water-power can 
be utilized, many of the mills are located in the 
mountains, quite distant from town or city. In 
order to secure operatives in these uninhabited 
regions, dormitories seemed to be a necessity. 
But because of the rapid growth of industry, 
the short period during which women work, 
and because of the unfavorable reports that 
have been spread as to the general conditions, 
it has become quite difficult for the operators to 
keep the dormitories filled. Labor agents are 
employed who go to all the country districts to 
“drum up” the business, and as they receive 
a certain sum for every girl secured, they are 
apt to paint in glowing colors the delightful 
life in the factory dormitory. They make a 
contract with the girls’ parents fixing the wages 
and specifying that periodic remittances are to 
be made to the home folks. The agents ad- 
vance for outfit and transportation a certain 
sum to each worker recruited. Thus the new 
employee begins work as a debtor to her em- 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 73 


ployer, which binds her firmly to him whether 
such was the original intention or not. 

In order to be fair to all concerned, it must 
be said with emphasis that not all of these in- 
stitutions are conducted in an inhumane way. 
Many of the larger dormitories are carried on 
in a decent, sanitary, up-to-date fashion. It is 
rather in the smaller dormitories that one finds 
over-crowding, the bedding used, day and night, 
“in common, unaired and thus becoming the 
fertile bearer of diseases of various kinds.” 
Much complaint is also made as to the food 
given to the working girls by the managers of 
these dormitories. But a still worse charge 
against some of these dormitories is that the 
employers are not infrequently in league with 
the procurers for the houses of prostitution. 
Even if there is no such league, the panders 
for the brothels like to loiter around these dor- 
mitories hoping by means of shrewd methods 
to lure some of the working girls to these dens 
of vice. 

Thus it is seen that the new industrial world 
into which the women of Japan have entered 
with so much zest contains for them an incred- 
ibly long array of serious menaces. These fe- 


74, The New Japanese Womanhood 


male employees are shamelessly exploited by 
the inhuman shortsightedness of some employ- 
ers. The women will, however, be obliged to 
keep on, for they cannot go back to their former 
world of work because that does not any longer 
exist. But exploitation has a limit, and that 
limit seems to have been reached in Japan. The 
wise employers of women have begun to treat 
their female employees like human beings. 
They are kind to them and provide for their 
health and safety. The women are also be- 
ginning to understand the “tricks of the trade,” 
and refuse to be exploited so grossly. The gov- 
ernment, seeming to be suspicious of organized 
labor, is itself making honest efforts to correct, 
by means of legislation, the existing abuses. 
The much discussed Factory Law of Japan 
was first enacted in 1911. It was to be par- 
tially enforced in 1916, and is to become fully 
operative in 1931. It is a law without many 
teeth. By the original provisions children 
under fifteen, and women during the next fif- 
teen years, may not work more than fourteen 
hours in the twenty-four. After 1931, they 
may not work over twelve hours. Women may 
not work between Io p.m. and 4 a.m., unless 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 75 


there are shifts, and after 1931 they may not do 
night work at all. The law applied only to fac- 
tories that employ fifteen persons or more. 
During the busy season of the silk industry and 
some others, the working-day may be length- 
ened provided the sanction of the government 
be secured. 

In 1923, amendments to the law were passed 
which provide that this law shall be applied to 
all factories that employ ten or more persons. 
The age of juvenile workers is to be raised from 
twelve to fourteen, and a health insurance de- 
partment for laborers is to be established. 

At the time of the Washington Hours of 
Work Convention, Japan agreed to the provi- 
sion that children under sixteen and women are 
not to be employed more than eleven hours a 
day; but exception is made in the silk industry. 
Children under sixteen and women are to have 
two rest days a month; if they are on night 
work they are entitled to four rest days a 
month. The act prohibits work between 10:00 
p.m. and 5:00 a.m. for children under sixteen 
and women, but allows work up to 11:00 p.m. 
with the sanction of the authorities. The act 
also provides that in case of maternity and sick 


76 The New Japanese Womanhood 


women medical approval is required before 
working is permitted. Post-maternity women 
may with similar approval resume work three 
weeks after the birth of the child. 

Thus the law has been greatly improved, but 
there is much complaint that the thirty divi- 
sional superintendents and the three hundred 
inspectors, stipulated by the law, do not succeed 
in carrying out very rigidly the provisions of 
the Factory Law. Improvements will continue 
to be made, for the Japanese people will not 
allow themselves to be held up as less humane 
than the people of other nations. 

Some three millions of girls and women are 
engaged in public service, commercial, and pro- 
fessional walks of life. These include work 
such as clerking in stores and other business 
houses, railroad ticket offices, banks, post offices, 
telephone and telegraph offices, teaching in 
schools, nursing and midwifery. Clerks in 
stores and other business houses, number about 
1,500,000; public service and trades employ 
about 350,000 girls; one-half of the teachers 
in the more than 25,000 elementary schools are 
women, and about 4,000 women teach in the 
high schools. The women teachers receive only 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 77 


from one-half to two-thirds as much salary as 
do the men teachers in the same grade. There 
are about 35,000 nurses, 35,000 midwives and 
700 women doctors in Japan. Of the Japanese 
nurses it can be said that they are exceptionally 
efficient. They are kind and sympathetic to 
the patient and obedient to the doctors. But 
it has been said that because of their total de- 
pendence on the doctors, they have made the 
nurse’s work a trade rather than a profession. 

The professional career for Japanese women 
is still limited though law is probably the only 
one from which they are absolutely excluded. 
This general limitation does not imply that wo- 
men lack the brain power to serve society in 
this public way or in any other way. The un- 
derlying reason for it is that ancestral religion, 
social organization, and law, all, definitely place 
the right to rule the family and the duty to 
support it on the men of the nation. Whole- 
sale competition by the women along any line 
with these ordained supporters of the house and 
home, is still frowned upon—and not without 
reason—by a large part of society. Obviously 
there is in this a social inconsistency. This 
anomalous situation will correct itself only 


78 The New Japanese Womanhood 


when the individual will have both duties and 
rights which will help him to become econom- 
ically independent. 

It will be a surprise to the Occidental indus- 
trial worker to find that with the exception of 
the members of the rather weak labor organiza- 
tion of Japan, laboring men and women pre- 
fer to work under the conditions as they now 
exist. There was real sorrow in the hearts of 
many workers when the Factory Law partially 
went into effect. They felt that the right to 
decide the time and place of working was to 
them a sacred one, and to put any limitation 
on this, would inevitably mean suffering to 
them. In many cases the fear of these workers 
was well founded, for when the hours were 
reduced, their daily income was also reduced. 

The Japanese woman is passing through the 
same school of suffering that the women of the 
most advanced Occidental nations had to pass 
through. She will, in due time, have all the 
liberty that she is able to use; for with ability to 
use new rights, these rights will be forthcom- 
ing. The very surest way to produce a national 
calamity would be to give instantaneously to 
Japanese women full equality with men in all 


Woman’s New Role Outside the Home 79 


relationships of life. The women would be the 
chief sufferers. They must pass through a 
preparatory course before they can graduate 
into full equality. The women themselves will 
have to provide the initiative in this educational 
effort, as the course will very largely be a self- 
taught one. The method by which the Japanese 
women will reach this goal will likely be that of 
reformation—not that of revolution. 


CHAPTER VI 
JAPANESE WOMEN AND THE FINE ARTS 


HE Japanese are born artists. The aes- 
thetic in life is by them consciously and 
unconsciously cultivated, and beauty is a real 
part of life whether that life is lived in a hovel 
or ina palace. Instinctively the people under- 
stand how to look at an object of art or of 
nature so as to know exactly what they are 
seeing. Of recent years the Occident has 
tempted Japan to believe that real art takes too 
much time. And true, it does take time to see 
the beautiful, and still more to meditate upon 
it in order to appreciate it fully. 

Probably there is no better place to observe 
this inborn art than in and around the humble 
home of the peasant. The Western traveler, 
merely glancing at the obvious poverty of those 
living in such a home, is apt to pity these people 
because, as he thinks, there is in their life, from 


birth to death, not an iota of comfort or enjoy- 
80 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 81 


ment. In his haste ‘‘to catch the next train,” 
he does not see the beautiful flowers around the 
house nor the ancient kakemono or panel-pic- 
tures on the walls of the otherwise dingy rooms. 
Even the few simple utensils that are used by 
the hard-working woman of the home bear the 
unmistakable stamp of real art. It is not ex- 
travagant to say that in the Japanese home, 
wholly uninfluenced by the West, the ugly 
things are artistically beautiful. This native 
sense of the beautiful is, of course, not limited 
to either sex; but in the ordinary family it is 
probably true that it is transmitted more fre- 
quently by the mother than by the father. 

It is especially interesting to see how this 
artistic ability expresses itself in the art classes 
of the Japanese girls’ schools. Usually the 
teacher takes his classes out on the campus and 
finds some scenery for his students to sketch. 
Be the girls old or young, the difficult pictures 
mysteriously appear on the paper, and without 
the least visible effort on the part of the 
students. 

One is therefore not surprised that in the 
frequent art exhibits which are held in the large 
cities many of the paintings are by women. 


82 The New Japanese Womanhood 


There is hardly a kind of painting that has not 
been tried with success by Japanese women. 
While the women artists are at their best when 
they paint purely Japanese pictures, there have 
been many who have done European painting 
with credit to themselves. Landscape painting 
is probably the forte of Japanese women artists. 
The best known artist of this class is Madame 
Noguchi of Tokyo, who is known by the art- 
name of “Shohin,”’ which name she always 
signs to her pictures. Madame Kamimura, 
whose art-name is “Shoen,” is noted for her 
success in portrait painting. 

The Woman’s Art School in Tokyo is a well- 
known institution in which most of the present- 
day artists have received instruction. Though 
the present time, because of so many material 
interests, can hardly be called an age of art, the 
number of women artists is steadily increasing. 
The greater domestic freedom which the Jap- 
anese women are slowly acquiring will, no 
doubt, cause many to follow art as a life work, 
who under the former conditions could not have 
thought of such a career. 

LITERATURE: Hitherto, the world of lit- 
erature for the Japanese woman, if not alto- 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 83 


gether closed, was greatly limited, She has 
always been skilled in writing hokku, the seven- 
teen-syllabled Japanese poems that are so much 
loved in Japan and so little understood by the 
outside world. The object in these short verses 
apparently is to have a beautiful thought that is 
almost bursting for expression, and to let the 
words give only half hidden hints of the deep 
emotion contained. The ancient history of 
literature contains some names of women who 
are still famous as writers. The best known of 
these is Lady Murasaki, who about a thousand 
years ago wrote the classic novel called Genji 
Monogatari, The Tale of Genji. This novel 
which is read as a classic in all high schools 
of to-day has recently been beautifully trans- 
lated into English by Arthur Waley. 

The present age in Japanese literature is 
surely a new age, but confusion seems to be 
its outstanding characteristic. Russia has had 
an immense influence on Japan’s young men and 
young women. Tolstoi, Turguenev and Dos- 
toevsky are still powerful; but since the Rus- 
sian revolution, stacks of radical books have 
found their way into Japan and are making dis- 
ciples there. The government is eternally 


84 The New Japanese Womanhood 


vigilant to keep this movement under control. 
The French novels of Zola and de Maupassant 
have also had many readers. 

The number of novels and short stories that 
are appearing in Japanese is immensely large. 
These productions treat a very wide range of 
subjects, such as, naturalism, idealism, sensual- 
ism, melancholy, religion, socialism and radical- 
ism. Many books on sex matters are also 
found on the shelves of the bookstores. These 
books, which were imported at first and then 
rewritten in Japanese, are semi-scientific in 
form, but often are read for sensual purposes. 
In some recent books free love is discussed 
about as freely as the law permits. Serials in 
the hundreds of magazines are very widely 
read, but many of these stories are not of a 
high type. 

The part that women characters are playing 
in this sort of literature is perhaps less sig- 
nificant than might be expected. It must be 
remembered that the whole idea of courtship 
and love in the Western sense, is absent in Jap- 
anese literature. There is but little of the en- 
nobling power of pure love to be found in these 
writings, because such a thing is not supposed 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 85 


to exist in respectable society. In the honest 
opinion of the traditional Japanese, love and 
lust are one and the same thing. 

There are in Japan over twenty monthly 
magazines for girls and women. Some of these 
periodicals have a very large circulation. The 
Fujin Seka, Woman’s World, is perhaps the 
leading one of these publications. Several of 
them are very conservative, others may be de- 
scribed as progressive, and still others are radi- 
cal. Mrs. Motoko Hani of Tokyo is a woman 
of deep religious faith, who has at the same 
time a very practical turn of mind. She pub- 
lishes a monthly magazine which has a large 
circulation and is wielding a great influence for 
good among the younger women of Japan. Her 
editorials are progressive and characterized by 
common sense. She knows both the weaknesses 
and the strong points of her fellow-women, and 
her pen is ever ready to endeavor to improve 
their conditions. In order to apply practically 
her ideas for the development of the young 
women, she has founded a girls’ school near 
Tokyo. The name of the school is Jiyu Gakuen 
or The School-garden of Freedom. 

Most of the women authors who are at all 


86 The New Japanese Womanhood 


popularly known have as the burden of their 
writings the desire to elevate woman from her 
suppression. But no one of them would argue 
that the mother’s calling is an unworthy one. 
Mrs. Kikue Yamakawa says that the drudgery 
should be removed from mothers so that they 
might be able to do some social work outside 
of the home. These ideas are also expressed by 
some of the contemporary women poets. Mrs. 
D. Ito, whose nom de plume is White Lotus, has 
written a number of very beautiful poems on 
this theme. Madame Yukio Ozaki has trans- 
lated some of them into English. Here is an 
example: 


The law of this world that mortals share 
Is hard to bear ; 

Yet only in my dreams I dare pray 
For my own way. 


This little poem has been called the Japanese 
Woman’s prayer. 

Probably the best known woman writer now 
living is Mrs. Hiroshi Yosano. She is known 
as Akiko, and is unrivaled as a poetess. She 
is the wife of a university professor and the 
mother of twelve children, ten of whom are 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 87 


living. She does not forget her home by any 
means, and yet does an immense amount of 
outside work. She represents the modern real- 
istic school, and advocates the emancipation 
of Japanese women and the right of suffrage. 
She is a facile writer of magazine articles, but 
the one subject that she is always keeping to the 
fore is the social and political uplift of her 
fellow-women. Her poems, published in six- 
teen volumes, touch the deepest emotions of 
the Japanese heart. Here is an example of 
one entitled, “Hot and Cold Tears’’: 


For my sake and for your sake, too, 
For days of youth together spent 

I shed hot tears of gladness 

Also these cold tears of sadness. 


MUSIC: The native Japanese music differs 
much more widely from that of the West than 
does the painting or the literature of these 
different parts of the world. It is not only that 
the Occident seems to like the major key and 
the Orient the minor key. The Japanese music 
includes sounds that to an Occidental are im- 
possible and discordant, for the scale is by no 


88 The New Japanese Womanhood 


means the same as our own. The Japanese can 
strike notes that do not correspond to either 
full intervals or half intervals, but to some 
very odd fractions between these steps. Har- 
mony hardly exists in Japanese music. 

The principal musical instruments are the 
kokyu, a primitive three-stringed violin, which 
is played on the streets as the players walk 
along; the flute; the shaku-hachi, a kind of 
flute made of bamboo, one foot and eight inches 
long, and blown from the end of the stick; the 
Satsuma-biwa, a lute which is used to accom- 
pany the intoning of the exciting deeds of some 
hero; the samisen, a sort of three-stringed gui- 
tar invariably used by the geisha, and therefore 
so degraded that it is never used by respec- 
table women; the koto, a kind of horizontal 
harp having thirteen strings. This instrument, 
when played, is laid on the floor, and the player 
squats in front of it and plays it, having ivory 
picks fitted to the thumb, index finger and mid- 
dle finger of the right hand. The music of the 
koto is considered somewhat “high-brow,” and 
resembles Western music a little more closely 
than that produced on any other of the Jap- 
anese instruments. The samisen and the koto 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 89 


are played by women, and there are many who 
are highly skilled in this art. 

Many efforts have been made on the part of 
Japanese musicians to adapt a new kind of 
music that will contain the best of the 
native music and also the best points of 
Western music. Whether such hybridization 
of music is possible or not, time will tell. 
Messrs. N. Motoori and M. Miyagi, composers, 
are taking a leading part in this movement. In 
the meantime, the Japanese people have taken 
to Occidental music with the greatest avidity. 
They do not like Jazz, but desire the very best 
classical music. Western music is now the 
music of Japan. Vocal music, the organ, the 
piano and the violin are the forms of music that 
are the most popular. The central govern- 
ment has established a fine conservatory in the 
city of Tokyo, and is doing excellent work there 
in training music teachers for the public high 
schools of the country. 

The Japanese women do not have much vol- 
ume to their voices, but those who are trained 
can render very acceptably compositions that 
are soft and of a warbling nature. As they 
have very quick and nimble hands and fingers, 


go The New Japanese Womanhood 


it is not difficult for them to learn the mechan- 
ical part of piano playing or violin playing, but 
to bring out the proper expression of a musical 
production and put soul into what they play, is 
a great deal more of an undertaking. 

It is not generally known that Western 
music has made remarkable progress in Japan 
during the last twenty-five years. Seven or 
eight magazines devoted entirely to Occidental 
music are published. That Tokyo is on the 
world’s musical “map” is proven by the fact 
that in the Imperial Theater of that city a 
regular galaxy of the world’s best musicians 
has performed during the last few years. Pias- 
tro, Elman, Kreisler, Zimbalist, Parlow, Sykora 
and Schumann-Heink are some of the artists 
who have been greeted by overflowing houses. 
One of these world renowned musicians, upon 
his return to America, said that he had found 
out, much to his surprise, that in Tokyo he 
could play anything that he could play in a 
Western music center and be sure of an appre- 
clative audience. It was not necessary for him 
to make any musical concessions whatever, and 
he discovered that in Japan the audiences were 
as good as one would find anywhere. 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 91 


The world of Western music is now fully 
open to the Japanese woman, and she has a good 
chance to rank, in due time, as high in music as 
do the women of other countries. Moreover, it 
is certain that by means of music the women 
of Nippon will be able to advance themselves 
very materially in their upward struggle to- 
wards a larger and freer life. 

The opera has also made its appearance in 
Japan. The young men and the young women 
seem to be much attracted to grand opera. Ma- 
dame Tamaki Miura stands supreme as Japan’s 
prima donna. Her “Madame Butterfly’ and 
other operas have achieved her a fame through- 
out the whole world. She studied under the 
care of the great Patti herself. But she is 
musically too far ahead of her audiences in 
Japan to be fully appreciated. Moreover, there 
seems to be among some of her own nationals 
a certain jealousy of her fame, while others 
seem to think that she lacks in the true spirit of 
Japan because she insists on going abroad, hav- 
ing separated herself from her husband for 
the sake of her musical career. Her triumphs 
lie in Europe and America, though she has sung 
to large audiences in her native land. 


g2 The New Japanese Womanhood 


Madame Miura has surprised the world by 
showing the unlimited store of emotion that 
may be penned up in the bosom of a Japanese 
woman. She has thrown the native reserve to 
the winds and opened the springs of her soul. 
These feelings are there all the time, but are 
held in strictest leash under Japanese customs. 
The Japanese woman is probably the most fem- 
inine woman in the world, and the opera is one 
means of expressing this wealth of tenderest 
affection in her heart. 

THE STAGE: As among all other peoples, 
the theater in Japan has for ages been a very 
popular institution, and the content of the 
drama and its object are also much the same 
as they are in other nations. The peculiar 
point of an old style Japanese play is that no 
real women appear on the stage. There are 
always women’s parts in the play, but these are 
acted by men dressed up like women. In the 
great majority of plays, this is still the case. 
The former laws and customs made it impos- 
sible for women and men to appear together on 
the same stage. The main reason for this odd 
custom was that in the minds of the audience, 
the appearing together on the stage would have 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 93 


been taken as direct evidence of immorality 
between the sexes, and also, as no real love af- 
fairs were countenanced by the people in gen- 
eral, the stage could not show anything of 
which the social conscience would not approve. 
The year 1925 formed the turning-point in this 
ancient custom. This could be seen by the fact 
that at the Imperial Theater, for the first time 
in its history, men and women appeared on the 
scene together both playing women’s roles. 
Women in Japan have had to fight their way 
upon the stage, where finally they have won a 
rightful place. 

Miss Ritsuko Mori is considered the best ac- 
tress in Japan. She has studied the drama and 
acting, both in Japan and in European coun- 
tries. She finds the life of an actress very ar- 
duous, but she hopes that the day will soon 
come when women will be called on to portray 
on the stage the real life of women. There are 
several good writers of plays in Japan, but Miss 
Mori greatly desires that their number will 
soon be much increased. While many young 
women are willing to become actresses, most 
of them do not appreciate the difficulties that 
they would have to surmount. What is still 


04 The New Japanese Womanhood 


more of a hindrance is the fact that so few 
plays are writen that have real women’s parts to 
be acted by women. Many of the plays now 
used are adaptations of Western plays, Shake- 
speare having been frequently attempted. It 
is, however, evident that for the Japanese ac- 
tress to succeed, she must have parts that bring 
out the real life of her sex in Japan, and later 
on, she might try her hand at foreign dramas. 
THE MOVIE: The moving picture is popu- 
lar in every country, but in Japan it is extraor- 
dinarily so. There are several reasons for this, 
one of which is that the movie supplies a mod- 
ern means of securing an evening’s entertain- 
ment. Japan is exceptionally poor in this re- 
spect. he movie from the very beginning had 
men and women as players and, of course, mixed 
audiences. This was necessarily the case as 
the first films were imported from America 
and Europe. The Japanese now make many 
films, some of which are good, though most 
audiences still prefer American films in spite 
of the nationalistic tendency visible everywhere 
in the land. In 1922, 7100 American films and 
3200 Japanese ones were shown in Japan. Since 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 95 


then, the number of films of both kinds has in- 
creased about fifty per cent yearly. 

At the time when the American Exclusion 
Law went into effect, the movie theaters formed 
a boycott against American films. Only one 
theater in Tokyo did not join the boycott, con- 
tinuing to present American films to well-filled 
houses. After three weeks, the boycott broke 
down, and all the theaters again showed Amer- 
ican films. The audiences seem to like the 
“kick” that is found in the American films, and 
they also like the quickness of action character- 
istic of these films. But the true lover of Amer- 
ica could ardently wish that the crude animal- 
ism might be eliminated from all such American 
films that contain it, especially if the pictures 
are to be exported to foreign countries. 

The influence of the movie in Japan is by no 
means wholly good. But probably nothing else 
that takes place in Japan gives so much of an 
impetus to the breaking down of the traditional 
idea of womanhood as the moving pictures 
shown all over the Empire. In every film the 
heroine is the main part of the show. She is 
honored and loved and fought for to such an 
extent that the youths of Japan cannot help 


96 The New Japanese Womanhood 


changing their ideas about such things, either 
for good or for evil. At any rate, great con- 
fusion is being caused in Japan by this new 
intruder, the foreign movie. 

Japan now has quite a long line of movie 
stars of her own. Mrs. Bunroku Tokunaga, 
known as Komako Sunata, is causing a great 
sensation in Japan. She was brought up in 
California, and knows more about American 
customs than about those of her own country. 
She and her husband are now living in Japan, 
and are producing many films for their own 
people. In one of the first films they produced, 
a Japanese wife was pulling a heavy cart on 
which were riding her husband and a geisha 
who was entertaining the man. The lesson that 
was intended was so clear that no one could 
miss the point, and the newspapers of the whole 
country enlarged upon it by giving prominent 
reviews of the film. 

Katsudo-shashin, moving pictures, are surely 
making for more freedom of a certain kind 
among the younger Japanese women; but it is 
too early to say whether the evils that are 
caused by the unnatural bewilderment of it all 
will not perhaps outweigh the possible help they 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 97 


might afford towards the sane emancipation 
of the women. 

GEISHA: It is from an etymological stand- 
point only that the geisha can be treated under 
the heading of this chapter. The word geisha 
is composed of two Chinese characters—get 
meaning art, and sha meaning a person. Lit- 
erally, therefore, a geisha is an artist. There 
are 75,000 of these “artists” in Japan, on whom 
the men spend some 250,000,000 Yen a year. 
The geisha usually begins her career as a child, 
in one of the establishments that train girls 
for this vocation. The keeper of the establish- 
ment supplies the girl with food, clothing and 
lodging on the written promise of the girl that 
she will faithfully learn the geisha’s art and 
allow the master to retain the greater part of 
the money which she will earn after completing 
the course. The training, which extends over 
many years, consists of dancing, singing, play- 
ing the samisen, serving tea and liquor, and 
the art of making herself charmingly agreeable 
to men. Her singing, to which she always 
plays the samisen, is exceedingly shrill and 
thoroughly unmusical to the European, but her 
dancing is a very graceful form of attitudiniz- 


98 The New Japanese Womanhood 


ing. For the privilege of plying her mus- 
ical (?) trade, she must pay a tax of four yen 
a year. That she is unusually successful in 
what is hers to accomplish, there is not the 
least room for doubt. 

The geisha girls supply entertainment on a 
great variety of occasions. Sometimes they 
perform before mixed audiences, but far more 
frequently at tea-houses, dinner-parties and 
other gatherings where men only are present. 
It is in the geisha that the respectable women of 
Japan have their arch enemies and worst rivals; 
for these professional entertainers have thus 
far succeeded in keeping the women of good 
repute out of men’s society. 

To many of the transient tourists that visit 
Japan annually, the geisha frequently is the 
only woman in evidence. She has the boldness 
required to meet foreigners, and with her 
gaudy clothes, over-painted face and subtle 
graces, seems especially attractive to many of 
the newcomers. The post-cards, fans and other 
cheap art products which the tourist buys and 
takes home usually have pictures of getsha on 
them. 

There is so close a relation between the geisha 


Japanese Women and the Fine Arts 99 


and the prostitute that a large part of society 
has given up trying to draw any fine distinction 
between them. Thus the respectable woman 
who greatly desires to purify and elevate soci- 
ety, and who dreams pleasant dreams of a free, 
respected and influential new womanhood of 
Japan, finds in the geisha an obstacle almost 
insurmountable. 

From the facts submitted in this chapter it is 
obvious that the sphere of the fine arts in Japan 
is more nearly equally open to men and women 
than is the case in many other fields of human 
endeavor. If the women actually produce art 
of any kind that is of real worth, society will 
gladly recognize it, regardless of the sex of the 
producer. The success or failure in art is 
to-day purely a matter of ability. 


CHAPTER VII 
WOMAN AND JAPANESE LAW 


HE family system, based on ancestor- 
worship, furnishes the foundation of 
Japanese law. There is a great resemblance 
between this system and the ancient Roman 
Law, and it is this similarity that made it so 
easy for Japan to adopt as the basis of her 
modern laws France’s Napoleonic Code, which 
is fundamentally Roman. In order to under- 
stand the family system of Japan it is necessary 
to bear in mind that the word for family has 
an immensely wide meaning. The ancestor- 
worshiping family, in its broadest sense, is 
really a clan, which ideally consists of all the 
descendants of its patriarchal founder of the 
line—those now living, those to be born in the 
future, and the shades of those who have gone 
to the world beyond. As it was early discovered 
that such an unlimited family organization 


could not be effectively controlled, a plan to sim- 
100 


Woman and Japanese Law 101 


plify and reduce the family relationship was 
devised. According to this method, each fam- 
ily is required to appoint one of its members— 
usually the oldest son—to be head of the house. 
Upon this head of the origmal or principal 
house devolves the grave responsibility of car- 
ing for the family and its property and of at- 
tending faithfully to the worship of the ances- 
tors. Younger sons who are not heads of 
houses, if they choose to do so, are free to 
establish new families, which, technically, have 
no relation with their ancestors.. The founders 
of such new houses really become the origi- 
nators of new lines of ancestry. 

Thus the Japanese family is a small mon- 
archy whose authority is almost absolute. The 
rule is held by the koshu, or head of the house. 
All the members of the family under him must 
obey him, but they have the right to look to 
him for sustenance, education, and as many of 
the comforts of life as the economic condition 
of the family permits. 

It is seen from this fact that in a certain 
sense there are no individual men in Japan and 
still less any individual women. Individuals 
are merely units of the system, and the sys- 


102 The New Japanese Womanhood 


tem, being its own end and object, requires all 
individuals to make due sacrifices for it. This 
sounds much like socialism, and it is a kind 
of socialism, not fraternal but paternal. What- 
ever the political philosophy may be, it can be 
truthfully said that Japan is efficiently gov- 
erned and that generally her laws are well 
obeyed. 

The active principles of Japanese law have 
to do mainly with the man, the husband, the 
head of the family, and property. To uphold 
these principles the women have patiently and 
faithfully paid an overflowing share of sacri- 
fice. According to Katayama, in his “Woman’s 
Law,” the troubles and disabilities of women 
increase in the order as they are unmarried 
women, or mothers, or wives. The woman be- 
fore her marriage has more nearly the same 
legal status as her brother than is the case after 
her marriage. It is, therefore, much more than 
a joke to say that matrimony brings to the 
Japanese bride all kinds of troubles—domestic, 
social and legal. 

The family is the legal unit, and as pointed 
out before, marriage means to the woman a 
legal transfer of herself from her father’s 


Woman and Japanese Law 103 


family to that of her husband’s family. This 
transfer is called in legal terms “changing the 
kosekt.’ In this word, ko means house, and 
seki means census register. Legal marriage 
does not consist of any ceremony, but only in 
the erasure of the woman’s name from her 
original family register and the adding it to 
the family register of her husband. 

The legal marriage engagement is carried 
out entirely by the heads of the two families 
concerned. The law does not require that the 
prospective bride should be consulted, nor does 
it recognize love as a reason for marriage. The 
marriageable age for the two sexes is legally 
fixed at seventeen for men and fifteen for wo- 
men, and the legal majority for both men and 
women is twenty; but in order to be legally 
married without the consent of the parents, 
the man must be at least thirty and the woman, 
twenty-five years of age. It is always required 
that the wife be the one to change her registra- 
tion, except in cases of adoption. 

The rather quaint custom of adopting a hus- 
band, it will be remembered, is practised when 
a family has no son to become the heir and the 
agent for providing worshipers of the family 


104. The New Japanese Womanhood 


ancestors. Such an adopted husband or son 
is called in Japanese, yosMi, foster-son. This 
son cuts off all legal relations with his own 
family and takes the family name of his wife. 
The couple married in this way is always ex- 
pected to live in the house of the bride’s family 
and, of course, children born to such a union 
belong to the wife’s family. Adoption has now 
become quite unpopular, and unless the woman 
has an especially attractive bank account, the 
family will often look in vain for suitable can- 
didates. The reason for this hesitancy is the 
fact that the adopted husband must submit to 
woman’s government, which always seems 
humiliating to the mere man. 

Monogamy is the legal form of the family 
in Japan, and bigamy is, before the law, im- 
possible. Yet, a man may with impunity have 
concubines if they are unreported and unrec- 
ognized. Among the younger men this un- 
worthy custom is fast dying out. Society in 
general frowns on this ancient practise which 
has made the lot of many a legal wife especially 
intolerable. 

There are two kinds of illegitimacy in Japan. 
The one is the ordinary kind; namely, children 


Woman and Japanese Law 105 


born out of wedlock. The other kind is by far 
the more numerous, and has its origin in the 
peculiar marriage laws of the country. It has 
been said that a union is legalized if and when 
the koseki of the wife is transferred to that of 
the husband’s family. This may be done imme- 
diately upon marriage, or any time thereafter, 
or never. Children born to an unregistered 
union are illegitimate, but become legitimate 
upon the changing of the koseki on the part of 
the mother. Usually when such unregistered 
unions are contracted a social marriage cere- 
mony is observed, and the ordinary people do 
not consider these couples as living together 
illegally. The law also recognizes a yobi no 
jidai, which means a preparatory or trial mar- 
riage. The woman is independent during this 
stage of marriage and she or the man can dis- 
solve this arrangement at any time, though 
the consent of the other party is usually sought. 

The reasons for not changing the koseki of 
the wife are numerous and have been classified 
by Japanese writers as follows: (1) Mere in- 
difference. It is too much trouble to report to 
the authorities. “Many others do not report, 
why should I?”, thinks the person in question. 


106 The New Japanese Womanhood 


(2) The man puts the matter off in order to 
hold the whip over the woman. He also wants 
to see whether children will be born or not. If 
none are born, the matter of separation is very 
simple. There are very many separations of 
this nature. (3) When the woman is the head 
of the house. This will happen when a family 
has no sons. In such a case, the oldest 
daughter, because she is the head of the house, 
ought to have procured an adopted husband, 
but this sometimes is not feasible. If such a 
woman should form a union with a man who 
refuses to be adopted, the union cannot be re- 
ported to the authorities, as the law does not 
allow the woman to resign as head of her fam- 
ily. (4) The nobility and the soldiers must 
have the consent of their superiors to get mar- 
ried. ‘There are many cases where the securing 
of such consent would be awkward and diffi- 
cult, and so no report is made to the authorities. 

It is easily seen that the wife in all of these 
cases is largely without redress. There are 
other situations, however, in which there is 
still greater discrimination against the wife. 
The real wife must treat the child of her hus- 
band’s concubine as her own child if the hus- 


Woman and Japanese Law 107 


band recognizes the child and has it made le- 
gitimate. Incase the wife should be the mother 
of a child born out of wedlock, the child can 
never be made legitimate. The matter of rec- 
ognizing an illegitimate child is the absolute 
privilege of the husband. This discrimination 
against the woman under such circumstances is 
not limited to the law. Society in general also 
treats the illegitimate girl harsher than it does 
the boy, especially when it comes to marriage. 
In case of adultery, the woman only is pun- 
ished, asarule. The exact provision of the law 
is that adultery in a wife is full cause for di- 
vorce on the part of the husband, but when a 
husband is guilty of adultery his wife cannot 
bring suit for divorce. Only the husband of 
the adultress can bring action for divorce 
against the adulterer. The punishment for 
adultery on the part of a woman is two years 
of imprisonment. There is no punishment for 
the man. A private prostitute may be impris- 
oned for thirty days. The guilty man in sucha 
case is not punished, but the person providing 
the place for private prostitution is punished. 
The civil and the criminal codes, in many 
of their provisions are avowedly discriminatory 


108 The New Japanese Womanhood 


against the wife. The husband has the abso- 
lute right to decide on the place of residence, 
only no wife is obliged to live in the same house 
with a concubine of the husband. 

A woman, upon marriage, becomes incom- 
petent for many legal acts. She must secure 
the permission of her husband to receive back 
the principal and interest of her own money on 
investment; to borrow money, or indorse a 
note ; to buy or sell real estate or important per- 
sonal property; to bring up a case in court; to 
give gifts, or to solve some disagreement be- 
tween other people, or to promise to act as go- 
between for settling such disagreements; to 
appoint some one as heir, or to discontinue a 
person thus appointed; to accept gifts, willed 
property or to refuse such; to bind herself out 
to other people. 

In Japan the subject of divorce is a very 
vague one, chiefly because of the many trial 
marriages and unreported unions that exist. 
Such unions are outside the scope of the law, 
and can readily be dissolved at will. For se- 
curing a divorce from a registered marriage, 
there are two recognized methods. The one is 
by mutual consent, if the man or woman both 


Woman and Japanese Law 109 


are not less than twenty-five years old. This 
does not give absolute freedom in all respects. 
The other method is by court decisions. Either 
one or both of the parties concerned can bring 
proceedings for divorce. According to one 
legal authority, a third party can under certain 
conditions secure the divorce of a married cou- 
ple even if the two persons directly concerned 
do not desire it. 

The principal causes for divorce as recog- 
nized by the law courts are: sexual immorality 
on the part of the wife—there is no reciprocal 
right for the wife; when either one is guilty 
of crimes that are punishable by three years or 
more of imprisonment, such as forgery, bribery, 
fraudulence, larceny, burglary and false pre- 
tense; in cases of cruelty and insult on the part 
of either one; in case one rejects the other from 
malice; in case one is insulted by the near rela- 
tives of the other. 

The divorced woman returns to her original 
family, but she is still the legal mother of her 
children, though the husband has full charge 
of them and they belong to his family. The 
legally divorced woman can marry again when 
six months have elapsed after the granting of 


110 The New Japanese Womanhood 


the divorce. As to the relative prevalence of di- 
vorce, it is probable that Japan still holds the 
unenviable record among civilized nations of 
having the greatest number, but the United 
States is a very close second in this notorious 
competition. 

The status of a Japanese widow is very care- 
fully defined in the legal code. The widow re- 
mains a full member of the husband’s family, 
and, unless the head of the family gives his con- 
sent, she cannot marry again. Even if such 
consent can be obtained, the law does not allow 
her to marry again until at least six months 
after the death of her former husband. If the 
widow should happen to be the heir, she can- 
not marry again unless another heir is ap- 
pointed to whom all the property rights will 20. 
The widow becomes heir when her deceased 
husband has no brothers or sisters. If the 
father-in-law is still living, she will come under 
his direct and entire control. Whenever the 
husband’s brother or sister becomes the head 
of the family, the lot of the widow is usually 
an exceedingly unenviable one. 

There is a great deal of discussion going on 
at present as to what is proper for a widow 








Woman and Japanese Law 111 


to do in the matter of a second marriage. There 
are still those who hold to the ancient belief 
that it is purely a case of faithlessness towards 
her deceased husband for a widow ever to 
marry again. But the newer ideas on these 
questions have greatly reduced this class of 
social purists. Many people now advocate that 
a widow ought to be entirely free to marry 
again. These claim that if she has children, 
the laws should be very sympathetic to her 
so that she might be able to bring up the chil- 
dren successfully; for in these well-reared chil- 
dren she would bring honor to her deceased 
husband much more really than by vowing to 
spend a widow’s life to the end of her days. 

The peculiar law of primogeniture of Japan 
often makes the life of a widow very wretched. 
She can under certain conditions become the 
successor to the property of the family, but this 
is avoided as much as possible. Even if the 
title of the property is in her name, she is 
merely holding it in trust. She cannot use any 
of it though the amount of it increase under 
her management, for it must all go to the 
children. 

There are numberless other points in the law 


112 The New Japanese Womanhood 


of the land that give to women rights that are 
inferior to those granted to men. She does 
not have the right of suffrage; she cannot be- 
come an Official; she cannot become a lawyer ; 
her rights as an industrial worker are but 
meagerly recognized in the Factory “..w; in 
the educational world, whether as student or 
teacher, she does not at all have the same advan- 
tages that a man has; she is less free than a 
man to go about. 

As this is not a comparative study of women’s 
condition in the different countries of the 
world, it is hardly necessary to recall the fact 
that Japan is by no means the only country 
that discriminates against women. Every coun- 
try in the world does the same. It is only a 
matter of degree. This, however, does not es- 
tablish the righteousness of it anywhere, but 
makes the unfairness appear the greater. 

As revising the legal codes of any country 1s 
necessarily a slow process, the women of Japan 
who are desiring a change in this matter will 
very probably discover that progress in this will 
be much slower than is agreeable to them. 


CHAPTER VIII 
WOMAN AND POLITICS 


O many people it will sound like mere 

pleasantry to talk about Japanese women 
securing the franchise and entering the world 
of politics, because hitherto only a very small 
percentage of even the men have had the right 
to vote. This greatly limited male franchise 
was determined by the amount of tax a man 
paid annually. But early in the year 1925 the 
new Manhood Suffrage Bill was passed by the 
Diet and became the law of the land. This 
bill gives the franchise to almost all men who 
are thirty years old or older, thus adding about 
nine millions of voters to the previous list of 
one million. One reason for setting the age 
limit so high was, according to the newspapers, 
to keep the students away from the polls. 
Thinking that perhaps there might be radical- 
ism in the minds of some of the younger men, 


the Japanese authorities considered it wisest 
113 


114 The New Japanese Womanhood 


to make it impossible for any such extremists 
to tamper with the things of the government. 
In such an atmosphere a woman’s rights 
movement might be expected to get short shrift, 
but the leaders among the women worked espe- 
cially hard at the time the men’s suffrage bill 
was drawn up and discussed, because they 
hoped against hope that they might be included 
in this new law. The opposition had an easy 
time of it, because the objectors are not limited 
to the great majority of the men but include 
at least one-half of the women themselves. But 
in spite of the relative fewness of their voices, 
the women who advocated this measure are 
very zealous, and feel sure that their cause is 
righteous and that what they are working for 
will as surely come to pass in Japan as has been 
the case in many other civilized countries. 
There is in existence a very active organi- 
zation called, “Women’s Suffrage Federation.” 
This body was instrumental in actually bring- 
ing a suffragette bill before the Diet. Though 
the bill was promptly voted down, it is need- 
less to say that it will not stay down. In 1924, 
a Woman’s Day was established which is to be 
observed annually and is to serve as one means 


Woman. and Politics 115 


of keeping the fires of hope burning. These 
women feel that they are being treated unfairly 
and they will not desist seeking justice. 

The Diet of 1921-1922 repealed the regula- 
tion which forbade women to attend political 
meetings. This was regarded by many as a 
long step towards the political emancipation of 
the Japanese women. The police regulations 
have also been so revised that women can now 
organize political clubs and hold meetings of a 
political nature. When these regulations were 
changed, both the Tokyo Asahi and the Osaka 
Asahi—probably the best daily newspapers in 
Japan—published editorials in which this move- 
ment was highly commended. They urged the 
public to take a sympathetic attitude towards 
women’s emancipation, and encouraged the 
women to use their newly acquired rights to the 
fullest extent. These dailies pointed out that 
in most civilized countries women are granted 
the franchise, and that as it is a foregone con- 
clusion that Japanese women will also be vested 
with these rights sooner or later, it would be 
advantageous to the State and the community 
to assist the women in gaining political train- 
ing and culture; but that the women on their 


116 The New Japanese Womanhood 


part must make a firm resolution to contribute 
something to the State and the community by 
wisely exercising these new rights. 

The editors of the Japanese newspapers have 
their eyes wide open to see how woman’s suf- 
frage is working in Europe and America. In 
these countries experience indicates that the 
best achievements of the women are especially 
noticeable in local and municipal government. 
Questions of education, proper care of poor 
children, playgrounds for children, the milk 
supply and sanitary measures, are the lines 
along which woman’s suffrage has been a de- 
cided help. This part of government is merely 
the extension of the home to community prob- 
lems in these countries, and as the Japanese 
woman in the home—though very quiet about 
it—is at least a little power behind the throne, 
it is maintained that a similar extension of the 
home in Japan would also produce salutary 
effects. 

Mrs. Shinko Kodama, who was one of the 
first directors of the Women’s Suffrage Fed- 
eration, has views on this general subject which 
may be taken as fairly representative of all the 
members of the organization. To a newspaper 


a 


Woman and Politics 117 


reporter’s questions, “Should Japanese women 
have the right to vote?” and, “Could they uti- 
lize the franchise safely and properly?” Mrs. 
Kodama replied: “It is hard to say whether all 
Japanese women desire to have the suffrage, 
but I am confident that the day has arrived 
when a campaign should be started to prepare 
Japanese women for the time, which is bound 
to come soon, when they will demand the vote 
and probably get it. I believe that woman 
suffrage is the shortest cut to rectify the injus- 
tices that women are subjected to, and for re- 
dressing their grievances. We must have a 
hand in making the laws; we will see that 
they are framed in such a spirit that they 
will not favor either sex. This is the 
reason why the Women’s Federation is keen 
about securing suffrage, in spite of the con- 
tention that there is plenty of useful social 
work to be done without having to meddle with 
politics.” Mrs. Kodama wisely adds: “Of 
course, everything will have to be done gradu- 
ally; and the old order will have to give way 
to the new. The campaign for woman suffrage 
is a colossal task, and cooperation and con- 


118 The New Japanese Womanhood 


certed action are absolutely necessary if suc- 
cess is to be achieved.” 

From this platform of principles it can be 
seen that the leaders of this movement are not 
erratic or fanatic in the methods which they 
are using to further their cause. They realize 
fully that if the great majority of the women 
really desired the suffrage they would soon 
have it. One of the first duties to be attended 
to was to unify and bring into hearty coopera- 
tion the various women’s organizations which 
had the franchise as one of their aims, even 
though they may have stressed other things as 
more urgent. Such societies are the Peace So- 
ciety, the W.C.T.U., the New Women’s So- 
ciety, the Suffrage Federation and others. 

According to government statistics, the total 
number of local women’s organizations of all 
kinds in the country is about 65,000. By no 
means do all of these have the franchise as 
one of their objectives; but it is safe to say 
that very many of them do wish woman to be 
enfranchised. The Suffrage Federation now 
has over 2,000 members. Whatever progress 
in the suffrage movement is now being made, 
is largely confined to the matter of lining up 


a i 


Woman and Politics 119 


all the women who aspire to the right of having 
the vote. From the headquarters in Tokyo, 
the Empire is strewn with various pamphlets 
by which it is hoped to interest the women in 
the general movement and also to educate them 
in what suffrage would mean to them. At the 
same time, this organization has been sending 
some of its members to Europe and America to 
study at first hand the workings of women’s 
suffrage in these countries, and to learn from 
the leaders there, all they can of what might 
be helpful to them in the feminist movement in 
Japan. There is nothing sophomoric about 
their work, for they go at it like seasoned 
politicians. 

Doubtlessly, the greatest hope for success in 
this undertaking lies in the young women of 
the industrial and the commercial groups and 
in those who have received an education about 
equal to that which young men receive. Such 
young women will naturally ask themselves 
why it is that all the men can vote while they 
have no right to do so. Questionnaires on 
woman’s suffrage have been used as a means 
of finding out what the women themselves want 
in the matter. Ina recent effort of this kind, 


120 The New Japanese Womanhood 


595 answers were received from women of 
various parts of Japan. Of these, 281 favored 
woman’s suffrage, 275 were against it, and 39 
did not state any preference. Not much can 
be deduced from this endeavor to feel the social 
pulse. One of the 281 who replied was Mrs. 
Chiyo Kitabata. She claimed in no uncertain 
tones that just because women had so much to 
do with the home and the bringing up of chil- 
dren, they would be the more serious in decid- 
ing matters which had to do with all the homes 
and all the children of the nation. 

The family system of Japan is, of course, 
the source of the strongest opposition to 
woman’s suffrage. The conservative portion 
of Japanese society is very powerful and sin- 
cerely fears that such a revolutionary measure 
would totally disrupt everything that is of any 
value in Japan. What seems to be unbearably 
disagreeable to the average Japanese husband 
is the fact that under woman’s suffrage the 
wife could have political views different from 
his own, and could really nullify his vote if she 
desired to do so. This inherently Japanese op- 
position to woman’s suffrage is supplemented 
by the more universal objections which have 


Woman and Politics LY 


been raised against it in the different countries 
that now have it or are considering it. Truly, 
the obstacles that must be overcome before this 
dream can become a reality in Japan are as 
numerous as they are immense. 

Over against this discouraging situation may 
well be placed the almost endless patience of the 
Japanese woman and her power to suffer. 
These are the virtues that she has been com- 
pelled to learn so thoroughly in the hard school 
of life, and it is not improbable that in these 
bitter experiences of days gone by she will un- 
earth the power that will finally enable her to 
reach the goal which the leaders have set up for 
her in the matter of suffrage. 

The women of Japan will be much aided in 
their upward struggle by a peculiar, half- 
expressed democracy that is deeply ingrained in 
the very soul of Japanese society. Japan is a 
true monarchy, but the people as people are 
never lightly treated by those in authority. 
There is a real love between the governing and 
the governed. While this love would seem to 
be largely of the kind that exists between in- 
feriors and superiors, it is true too that the 
spirit of love between equals has also always 


122. The New Japanese Womanhood 


existed. Japanese scholars of political science 
insist on claiming that democracy is a real part 
of the true spirit of Japan. This democratic 
feeling has a tendency to disregard sex when it 
puts a valuation on an individual. 

Before the universal man-suffrage bill be- 
came a law, when tax on property and income 
was the basis on which suffrage was granted, 
there were many men who advocated that those 
women who paid the required amount of tax 
ought to have the franchise. Even one of the 
political parties mildly urged that those women 
who are the heads of houses should have the 
right to vote. As head of a house, a woman is 
not merely an individual woman, but is the rep- 
resentative of the whole family group, and the 
tax which she pays is that levied on the prop- 
erty of the family. 

An interesting custom among some of the 
men politicians of Japan is that they often have 
their wives accompany them on electioneering 
trips. These wives distribute letters and adver- 
tisements which modestly tell of the ability and 
patriotism of the husbands. Smiles and the 
interchange of beautiful compliments on the 





Woman and Politics 123 


part of the wives, often seem to go far towards 
the success of the husbands in the election. 

The strong leaders of the feminist movement 
insistently declare that while women’s first 
sphere is in the home, their activity must not 
be limited to the home. They put this desire 
for outside activity squarely on _ patriotic 
grounds. They claim that Japan will be better 
governed, better educated, better in morals, and 
more highly civilized when the women help the 
men in furthering these great causes than when 
the men try to do this service single-handed. 

If the women leaders can really show their 
people that woman’s suffrage will mean a 
greater and better Japan, they will surely win 
the day. Nothing will prod the Japanese people 
into action so quickly as the feeling that they 
are lacking in any of the essentials of civiliza- 
tion. They will not brook any invidious com- 
parisons. They will investigate whether there 
is any ground for the charges made against 
them, and if they find a weakness actually ex- 
isting, they will instantly make the required 
changes, if they possibly can do so. 

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt recently said, “I 
predict that all women of the civilized world 


124 The New Japanese Womanhood 


will be enfranchised within twenty-five years.” 
Basing one’s judgment on the progress Japan- 
ese women have made in the past twenty-five 
years, it is very easily within the bounds of 
possibility that they will have the vote by 1950. 





CHAPTER IX 
THE JAPANESE WOMAN IN SOCIETY 


F society is taken to mean the relationship 
of men and women who hold the same sta- 
tion in life and who associate together for 
mutual benefit and fellowship, then there is, at 
present, no society for Japanese women. The 
young men and the young women of Japan do 
not “go out into society” in the sense that this 
term is understood in the Occident. Doing so 
would surely be considered by the generality of 
people as an outrage if not a misdemeanor. As 
previously stated, all the ideas of love and 
courtship among unmarried men and women, 
debutant and debutante, “sheik and flapper,” 
and all the activities that are included in our 
terms “‘social world,” simply are not supposed to 
exist in Japan. 
To make a match for life is not the happy 
duty of those who are to be mated, but is the 


sacred business of the families of the young 
125 


126 The New Japanese Womanhood 


people who are considered by their elders as 
marriageable. If all the attraction and the 
pleasure that result from the association of the 
two sexes were eliminated from our “society,” 
the residue would surely be an intolerably dull 
affair. This is just about the situation that one 
finds in the “society” of Japan. Terms like 
“court” and ‘‘woo” imply that the one who is 
courted or wooed, namely the woman, occupies 
a position of highest respect in reference to 
the other sex; but in Japan woman as a per- 
sonality does not yet hold such a position. 

Where the woman of the West is strongest 
—in society—the Japanese woman is weakest. 
It is not improbable even that the Japanese 
woman will get political rights before she will 
receive social prerogatives, thus reversing the 
order of the development of her Occidental sis- 
ters. Quite frequently one notices that the 
Japanese wife is not yet invited to be a real 
companion to her husband and hardly ever is 
she his confidante. 

On the other hand, it would be a gross mis- 
judgment to think that all Japanese men are 
tyrannical towards their wives. The great 
majority of them are very kind and even loving 


The Japanese Woman in Society 127 


to their wives, and most of the families live 
happily together. But one reason for such 
peaceful relations may certainly be found in 
the fact that most wives know how to stay in 
the places assigned to them. The question of 
equality hardly ever becomes a question. It is 
taken for granted by both that the man is 
master, and that the woman is to be obedient 
and tractable. It must, however, not be for- 
gotten that the man is almost as much a slave 
to the family system as the woman, and that he 
is not free to change at will the basic system 
of the national life. The man is but slowly 
becoming an individual himself, and therefore 
is not yet in a position to extend full emancipa- 
tion to the woman. It is obvious that as long 
as this is the condition, real respect for woman, 
based on the worth of her own personality, is an 
impossibility. That this is so, evinces itself in 
many ways, some of which are quite subtle 
while others are very glaring. 

The Japanese language lends itself well to 
the expression of the superiority of the male 
sex. There are in Japanese many words for 
the personal pronoun you. The polite word for 
it is anata, and a much less polite word is omae. 


128 The New Japanese Womanhood 


In conversation between husband and wife, 
the wife always addresses her husband as 
anata, but the husband calls his wife omae. If 
a husband should call his wife anata, his friends 
would surely consider him as badly henpecked. 
This is only one of the numerous expressions 
that distinctly bring out discrimination against 
women. 

It is the rule for the wife not to eat with the 
husband if he hasa guest. If the wife appears 
at all during the meal, it is as head of the serv- 
ants, so that the proper respect due the guest 
and her husband, may be shown them by her. 

Much has been written, often in a rather 
unfriendly spirit, about the public bath-houses 
of Japan and their lack of properly separated 
bathing facilities for women. That the evils 
of this condition have been greatly overstated 
in the West is certainly true, but it is also true 
that if the women were more highly regarded 
by the men, a wholesale modification of the 
bath-houses would instantly be witnessed. 

It must not be assumed from what has been 
stated about the Japanese social world that the 
life of women is entirely void of recreation 
and pleasure. There are numerous semi-social 


4 
& 


The Japanese Woman in Society 129 


functions which are open to them. Each tem- 
ple has its annual festival, which is made the 
occasion for an outing for the whole family, 
resembling in some respects our country Sun- 
day School picnic of days gone by. The women 
and children of the neighborhood thoroughly 
enjoy themselves on an occasion like this. The 
theater also is much enjoyed by the whole fam- 
ily. For hours they sit on the floor in the square 
boxes to watch the show. Very often lunch 
is taken along to the theater, as the old style 
plays require the greater part of a day for their 
performance. 

The Hanami, viewing the cherry-blossoms, is 
undoubtedly the most social outdoor gathering 
that comes into the life of Japanese women. 
Men and women, old and young, in larse num- 
bers visit the parks of cherry-trees when the 
beautiful pink blossoms are at their best. The 
sight is one that cannot be forgotten, and even 
the prosaic persons burst out into poetry as 
they look through the branches of the trees now 
blushing in pinkest perfection. The men in go- 
ing to the park invariably carry their saké, rice- 
wine, in bottle-shaped calabashes; but they see 
to it that the contents of these gourds are soon 


130 The New Japanese Womanhood 


sent down their throats. This usually adds 
undue hilarity to the enjoyment of the simple 
beauty of the blossoms. The young men and 
the young women are also in evidence in the 
cherry-park, and if you watch carefully, you 
will notice that shy, very shy glances are inter- 
changed between some of them. No conversa- 
tion takes place between them, no games are 
played and the girls are not seen home, but, in 
their own estimation, their hikes to the cherry- 
blossoms are always immensely successful. 
The various games and athletic contests of 
the schools and colleges are also attended by 
men and women. The many welcome-receptions 
tendered to noted visitors when they come to a 
city, are open to women provided there is a 
woman among the guests of honor. Most of 
the educational meetings are also attended by 
both sexes. These are more recent ways of 
spending an interesting afternoon or evening. 
In Christian circles there is more mingling 
of the sexes than among other people, though 
in church the men and the women sit apart. 
But church work and Sunday School work and 
the various other gatherings bring men and 
women into closer social contact than is the 


The Japanese Woman in Society 131 


case in the non-Christian groups. In the 
Church of Christ in Japan, women do not only 
have the right to become elders, but many 
women actually now hold this church office. 
Dr. Y. Chiba, a prominent Christian educator, 
in a recent magazine article says: “It seems 
some theological schools with a large enroll- 
ment of male students are permitting women 
to attend—in some cases merely as listeners. 
Fven in as important a school as Aoyama 
Methodist Theological Seminary the experi- 
ment is being tried. The plan economizes 
teachers and equipment and gives opportunity 
for developing common sense in the ordinary 
relations of life. . . . Social advancement is 
the order of the day and women are daily be- 
coming more respected and considered. Even 
in the secular colleges the doors are being 
opened to them, so surely we Christians should 
take this step in advance without hesitation.” 
Greater freedom of this nature was formerly 
a fruitful source of adverse criticism of the 
Christians on the part of those who were op- 
posed to this religion. 

Though there are these opportunities when a 
Japanese woman can leave the drudgery of the 


132 The New Japanese Womanhood 


home and find some recreation outside, the fact 
still remains that the young woman does not go 
out into society where she would associate with 
the opposite sex, for the sake of such associa- 
tion. The poverty of the Japanese woman in 
social matters is truly surprising. She simply 
does not know how to act in mixed company. 
The young girl, who ordinarily is very correct 
in demeanor and most polite, becomes awkward, 
silly and totally ill at ease in the presence of 
unmarried men. She will hang down her head 
and will not answer if spoken to by a man. 
But the young man does not know a whit bet- 
ter than the woman how to act naturally at 
social functions where persons of both sexes 
are present. 

A few years ago in the larger cities quite a 
craze for dancing sprang up. The conservatives 
were horror-stricken when they saw some of 
their young women fox-trotting around with 
men. <A sort of miniature insurrection broke 
out against these performances considered so 
outrageous. On several occasions ruffians with 
drawn swords entered the hotels where danc- 
ing was going on and forced the Japanese 
women to leave the place. Soon afterwards po- 


The Japanese Woman in Society 133 


lice regulations were drawn up which forbid 
any dancing after ten o’clock at night. 

The chief reason why Japan makes such 
strenuous efforts to keep the two sexes apart 
seems to be because it is believed that this is 
the best way to keep the sex complex strong in 
men and women. Great fear of what has been 
called by the Japanese the neutralization of the 
sex instinct, is expressed by many intelligent 
people. A well-known woman recently said: 
“Neutral women who are neither one thing or 
the other, are not genuine representatives of the 
female sex.” Race suicide—apparently not 
much of a menace as yet—must be prevented 
at any cost. 

But there is another reason, much better un- 
derstood than the last one mentioned, why the 
older people are so reluctant to give young 
women more social rights. It is because they 
fear that the women are not at all prepared for 
a sudden transformation in social customs and 
that disaster would certainly be the result if 
an abrupt change should take place. Such ap- 
prehension on the part of the elders is not 
without foundation; for the Japanese young 
women do not as yet know how to use social 


124 The New Japanese Womanhood 


liberty. They have never been given a chance 
to learn how to protect themselves, how to ex- 
press themselves, or how to be themselves when 
in mixed company. They would not have the 
moral training nor a social sanction strong 
enough to fortify themselves against unprin- 
cipled men. It would be highly criminal if un- 
prepared and unprotected, without either rud- 
der or compass to guide them, they should 
abruptly be thrown out upon a treacherous, un- 
charted social ocean. 

There are, however, wise and experienced 
women of Japan, who, while they do not under- 
estimate the dangers that would lie ahead of a 
change in these customs, have profound sym- 
pathy with the younger women in their desire 
for more freedom in domestic matters and 
social relationships. To these it is clear that 
unless and until the women of Japan can be 
really controlling social factors, their lives will 
be cramped and shackled. These conservatively 
progressive leaders are convinced that now is 
the proper time to begin preparing the young 
women for the larger and freer life and that 
procrastination in this matter will be suicidal _ 





The Japanese Woman in Society 135 


to the cause of women and detrimental to the 
best interest of the nation. 

How then can the Japanese women create 
a social world and lead it in a dignified way? 
On the positive side, it is evident from their 
past experience that they will need the help 
of the school, the workshop, and a living, hope- 
inspiring religion. Negatively, in order to make 
a secure place for themselves in society, they 
will need to make still more strenuous efforts 
to drive out the geisha and the licensed prosti- 
tute; for these are menacing lions in the way 
of true progress. How strong these anti-social 
forces are can best be learned from the actual 
conditions. In 1924 there were 52,256 licensed 
prostitutes in Japan and 48,291 bar-maids, who 
may properly be regarded as the same as prosti- 
tutes. To these numbers must be added that of 
the private prostitutes—and these are simply 
countless. In March, 1925, a bill which aimed 
at the abolition of the licensed brothels was 
presented to the Diet and was defeated by a 
vote of 157 to 53. The opposition to this busi- 
ness is, however, much stronger than this vote 
would indicate. Petitions signed by 140,000 
people to prevent the brothels of Tokyo from 


136 The New Japanese Womanhood 


being rebuilt after the earthquake, were sent to 
the Diet. An “Anti-Vice Day” was observed 
at that time. The whole Christian community 
headed by the Salvation Army and the W.C. 
T.U. and large numbers of non-Christian peo- 
ple are up in arms against what they denounce 
as a national disgrace. The Awakened 
Woman’s Society has as one of its chief aims 
the abolition of this evil, and also many of the 
better newspapers have taken up the cudgels 
against the “slavery of the 20th century.” 

There is hope that the government of Japan, 
a member of the League of Nations, will come 
up to the standard set by the League on this 
question. According to the League’s treaty 
on this subject, all traffic in women under 21 
years of age shall be totally abolished. Japan, 
it seems, is willing to accept this treaty with 
the reservation that the age limit of girls shall 
be eighteen years, and that this new law shall 
not apply to any territory other than Japan 
proper. 

The getsha will most likely be fought with 
one of her own weapons, namely music. In the 
extraordinary love for the world’s best music, 
which is almost universally evidenced by young 


The Japanese Woman in Society 137 


Japan, is contained a dormant force which may 
become the death-blow to the geisha. In this 
musical war, the leaders pin their faith mostly 
on the piano and the human voice. It is the 
hope of these optimists to seize on the present 
“unusual demand for the classical music of the 
Occident and make it count for a new social 
order in Japan. It is the best young men and 
the best young women, who are learning to 
play the piano and to sing. Economically 
speaking, these young people come from the 
upper half of society, as it would be beyond the 
financial ability of representatives of the lower 
half of society to buy pianos. As the young 
men are also very fond of Western music, there 
is no doubt that they will prefer to the discord- 
ant thrumming of a geisha on a samisen, the 
beautiful strains of Beethoven or Chopin, 
played on a piano by a pure young girl. More- 
over, the piano will always remain in the home 
of the young woman, because it is too heavy to 
be moved at will. The friends of the young 
musician—girls and boys—if they wish to en- 
joy the music, will have to come to her home. 
In due time there will be young men who come 
to hear the music and also to associate with the 


138 The New Japanese Womanhood 


girl making the music. In this will be, it is 
hoped, the beginning of a new social world for 
the young Japanese people. 

The courtship—if it may be called such— 
that would have its origin in this way, would 
contain the best element of the Japanese custom 
as well as the best feature of the Western way 
of becoming engaged to be married. The court- 
ing would be done in the home with the full 
knowledge of the family, and at the same time 
the young people concerned would themselves 
decide whether they should be married or not. 
This is not a revolutionary method of proced- 
ure, nor is it merely a thing of the imagination. 
It is now being put to practice in not a few 
cases, and it promises to become far more gen- 
eral as the taste for music and the ability to 
produce it increase. Thus, it is hoped, the 
fountain of social intercourse which for ages 
has been sealed to Japan’s fair sex, will in this 
way become a source of genuine refreshment 
to the young of both sexes, and a great good 
to the nation. 


CHAPTER X 
ASPIRATIONS AND TRAGICAL CONSEQUENCES 


HAT gains and pains go hand in hand is 
certainly as true in Japan’s woman move- 
ment as it ever has been anywhere else in a 
great struggle towards the light. And these 
pains are not all caused by the effective blows 
of the reactionaries and the irreconcilables; for 
the reformers in Japan are not all of the same 
mind as to the objective, the method, and the 
means that are to figure in their own movement. 
These self-appointed doctors of society disagree 
to some extent both as to the diagnosis of the 
trouble and as to the proper therapeutic treat- 
ment of it. It is this condition of things that 
is partially responsible for the slowness of the 
progress and the severity of the attendant 
heartaches. 
As has been seen, the leaders in this move- 
ment, in a general way, desire that the mem- 


bers of their sex should have more education, 
139 


i140 The New Japanese Womanhood 


more domestic freedom, greater economic inde- 
pendence, more legal and political rights, and 
be a more dominant factor in society. This 
program is so immense that the whole of it can- 
not possibly be continually kept before the mind 
of even the keenest reformer. It is difficult, 
therefore, for the leaders to present a clear-cut 
platform to their perplexed followers. But 
what at least a respectable proportion of the 
reformers desire may be learned from the large 
number of answers to a questionnaire which 
asked: “What do women feel most keenly as 
necessary?” The things felt necessary were 
found to be very many indeed, but the six re- 
garded as needful by the largest number of ad- 
vocates were: (1) Society should know the real 
condition of the working woman; (2) the 
architecture of the Japanese house ought to be 
changed that a servantless life could be lived; 
(3) women should have the same educational 
advantages, the same legal rights, and the same 
pay for the same work as the men; (4) the re- 
formation of customs, especially those that are 
largely formal and have no positive value, is 
needed; (5) the removal from the men’s minds 
of the idea that men are lords, and women 


Aspirations and Tragical Consequences 141 


slaves, is urgently necessary; (6) women need 
freedom. 

In reading these answers, one gets the im- 
pression that many of those who expressed 
themselves in this way must belong to the in- 
dustrial classes, and do not represent Japanese 
womanhood as a whole. It is not strange at 
all that the industries as now conducted should 
produce highly dissatisfied women workers. 
What they thought would be a paradise of free- 
dom is, in some cases at least, turning out to 
be a Juggernaut crushing the life-blood out of 
them. Even in the factories where good work- 
ing conditions prevail, a restlessness exists 
among some of the employees, because they 
have had a taste of freedom and now desire to 
have more of it and to have it permanently. 
Such hoped-for changes, however, do not ma- 
terialize as speedily as this dissatisfied and often 
ill-advised part of society demands, and great 
unhappiness is the natural result. Some moth- 
ers who are longing for relief from a part of 
the drudgery of house-work have pointedly ob- 
served that in Japan all kinds of machinery are 
introduced to secure efficiency in industry and 
that the women of the land help to run these 


142 The New Japanese Womanhood 


machines, but that no thought whatever is given 
to the securing of labor-saving devices to relieve 
the wife’s burdens in the home. 

The Yomiuri, a Tokyo daily newspaper, has 
recently expressed in the strongest language the 
belief that many of the suicides among married 
women were caused by the women’s skepticism 
about chastity. This doubt the paper based on 
the inequality of the law and social customs as 
regards marital faithfulness. Such women see 
that the husband can commit all sorts of im- 
moral acts without fear of falling into the 
clutches of the law; but that the least deviation 
from the path of virtue on the part of the wives 
will at once expose them to legal punishment 
and to the harshest public criticism. They re- 
sent this evident unfairness, and this feeling of 
resentment has been much strengthened by the 
hope for better things which the newer ideas of 
life are tantalizingly dangling before these 
women’s eyes. These deluded aspirants to jus- 
tice cannot bear up under the scathing censure 
of the public, and so they choose death at their 
own hands as a final resort. They at first were 
merely demanding the punishment by law of 


Aspirations and Tragical Consequences 143 


their husbands’ misconduct, but their own sui- 
cide was the end of the endeavor. 

There are also among the women of Japan a 
‘few socialists or communists of the reddest 
type. These demand not only equal rights with 
the men in all respects, but they speak of the 
emancipation of the sex relationship. They 
insist that all people, rich or poor, have a right 
to be married if they so desire and that the state 
or the community ought to take care of all the 
children that are born in the country. This 
group is altogether unJapanese in spirit and 
is not large enough to cause much of a stir. 
But the need seems to be felt at present by 
Japan for a reactionary movement away from 
the disturbing and disrupting influences that 
have come from abroad, and towards a return 
to the traditionally nationalistic spirit. (It 
may be well to remember at this point that in 
the matter of emphasizing nationalism, Japan 
just now has the whole world as company. ) 

Contrary to what most people might imagine, 
the subject of birth-control is studied in Japan 
with interest. Among its prominent advocates 
are Baroness Ishimoto and a few university 
professors. A few years ago Mrs. Sanger vis- 


144. The New Japanese Womanhood 


ited Japan, and in a quiet way presented her 
ideas on this subject. Those Japanese who sup- 
port this doctrine are, as a rule, peace-loving, 
patriotic people. Indeed, patriotism is the prin- 
ciple upon which this movement is based. The 
claim is made by the supporters that this idea 
will solve the great problem of population, and 
thus make directly for the peace of the world. 
It is asserted if the number of children in a 
family were smaller, they could be brought up 
much better, both in a physical and a moral 
sense, and that a larger proportion of the chil- 
dren could receive a higher education. More- 
over, the mothers would have more time and 
strength to be of help outside of the home, and 
could have the opportunity to enjoy the pleas- 
ures of a higher culture. In every way, these 
reformers hold, Japan would become a greater 
and better nation if society would permit birth- 
control to be taught to the people. 

Whether such a radical method of limiting 
the population will ever be adopted may be 
doubted; but the fact is that the birth-rate is 
now being slowly reduced because the marriage 
age of both men and women is being advanced 
by higher education among the upper half of 





Aspirations and Tragical Consequences 145 


society and by the industrial occupations among 
the lower half of society. Educators often re- 
mark that the present tendency among the 
graduates of girls’ schools is to sidestep matri- 
mony with the hope of seeking further educa- 
tion. Higher education is still much more gen- 
eral among men than among women, and these 
extra years devoted by the men to education 
have always caused a great disparity between 
the ages of husbands and wives, making for 
greater unhappiness in the home. This condi- 
tion will only be remedied when women will in 
reality have the same educational privileges that 
men have. Already campaigns have been 
launched for the admittance of women to the 
Imperial Universities and for the establish- 
ment of more institutions for the higher edu- 
cation of women. The latest move towards 
equal educational opportunities for men and 
women was made in Tokyo during the month 
of February, 1926, at a spirited meeting of a 
very determined group of about one thousand 
Japanese women. The plans formulated at this 
meeting involve a nation-wide agitation for the 
following definite demands: the raising of girls’ 
high schools to exactly the status of boys’ high 


146 The New Japanese Womanhood 


schools; the admission of women on equal terms 
to all the Government higher preparatory 
schools and special schools, or preferably the 
establishment of women’s schools of absolutely 
the same grades and equipment; the admission 
of women on equal terms to all the Imperial 
Universities. Some time before this meeting 
was held, a report was circulated that the 
government was planning to establish a college 
for women. The amount of money to be used 
for this purpose was given as $750,000. 

One of the oldest attempts of reform among 
women is that of dress reform. About thirty- 
five years ago many of the women of the upper 
class wore European dresses and hats. Most 
of these clothes were ordered from Paris and 
were not made specially for the individuals that 
wore them. The strong anti-foreign feeling 
that was aroused from 1890 to 1899 because of 
the slowness with which the Western powers 
withdrew their extra-territoriality rights, soon 
drove most of such occidental clothing curiosi- 
ties to the trash-heap. Some of these outfits 
are still to be found in go-downs and unused 
parts of Japanese houses. Very many men now 
wear European costume, and girls also, up to a 


Aspirations and Tragical Consequences 147 


certain age, are beginning to wear Western 
dresses, but it is not very common to see Japan- 
ese women wearing foreign apparel. 

Some foreigners like to go into ecstasies over 
the artistic beauty of the kimono, but many of 
the Japanese women themselves have but little 
praise for the native costume. Including the 
obt, a kimono is much more expensive than a 
foreign dress, and yet with all this outlay of 
money it is impossible for the wearers of the 
kimono either to walk or to work at twentieth 
century speed. But the main reason for the 
little progress that dress reform has made, is 
the fact that most men do not want the women 
to make the change. One disadvantage of 
the foreign dress is the great inconvenience of 
squatting on the floor experienced by a woman 
wearing a tight and closed skirt. The archi- 
tecture and the heating system of a Japanese 
house would also need to be altered if a change 
were made in woman’s attire. 

With all these obstacles and opposition to 
dress reform, one nevertheless sees in the larger 
cities some women who are dressed in foreign 
style. Unfortunately many of these attempts 
must still be considered failures. Instead of 


148 The New Japanese Womanhood 


the natural gracefulness, there is often a gawki- 
ness and a misfit all over. This too is a form of 
tragedy which is directly caused by the aspira- 
tions of a part of Japanese womanhood and 
the backward pull of the larger part of society. 

The punishment which young women receive 
for being tempted to listen to the crafty wiles 
of Cupid, is always severe and immediate. In 
a certain city, a college for young men and one 
for young women are separated by a street and 
a high board-fence around the campus of the 
college for young women. As the result of some 
building operations at the latter institution 
quite a large heap of earth was piled up near 
the high fence along the street running between 
the two institutions. The girl students soon 
found out that by getting on top of the mound 
of earth they could look over the fence and 
see the college boys engaging in their athletic 
sports. These uninvited though quite sympa~ 
thetic spectators from across the street irri- 
tated the young athletes to such an extent that a 
committee of protest was sent by the boys to 
the president of the girls’ college. In the con- 
sultation which ensued, this committee told the 
president that it was ill-bred and indecorous 


Aspirations and Tragical Consequences 149° 


for the girls to look at the boys playing, and 
that the players were so annoyed by such rude 
behavior that they could not do their best in 
the sports. The mound of earth was duly re- 
moved, and the college boys were happy to be 
protected again from the unwelcome gaze of 
the girls. While this instance may be some- 
what unusual it does show how tremendously 
persistent age-long customs may be and how 
swiftly and how surely the rough hand of cor- 
rection will fall upon any who dare to break 
these customs. 

But in spite of all that can be done by those 
who oppose innovations of every sort, changes 
in customs and traditions are steadily taking 
place along all lines. Many of the conserva- 
tives naively insist on placing all responsibility 
for these unwelcome tendencies among their 
fellow countrymen, upon the pernicious influ- 
ences coming from outside of Japan. This ob- 
viously is carrying matters to extremes, but 
the fact remains that many of the evils which 
Japan has to fight to-day have been imported 
from foreign countries. If to these alien forces 
of destruction be added those for which Japan 
herself is totally answerable, it will not be diffi- 


150 The New Japanese Womanhood 


cult to account for the many tragedies in the 
lives of the women at this time of transition. 
These adversities, however, may justly be con- 
sidered as the price of progress which the 
women are obliged to pay in order that the com- 
ing generations may have a less rugged road 
to travel, 


CHAPTER XI 
THE NEW JAPANESE WOMAN 


HE Japanese woman who is being evolved 
by the New Japan will be fitted for the 
larger duties which the changed ideals are 
bringing with them. She is very different 
from her sisters of bygone days, but is also 
quite unlike the so-called new woman of the 
West. She will never lose, it is to be hoped, all 
of her docile nature, her kindness of heart, her 
sweet and patient disposition, and her quiet but 
courageous spirit of self-sacrifice. Doubtlessly 
she will wish to retain the gentleness of her 
feminine soul, and will continue to be the 
mother par excellence. But because of the op- 
portunities which now are hers of gaining in- 
dependence of mind and body, she will hence- 
forth resent being considered a mere social 
parasite. 
Slowly the Japanese woman is becoming an 


individual with a personality distinctively her 
I51 


152 The New Japanese Womanhood 


own, and because of this new worth she will 
be respected and loved by men. The opportu- 
nity will be hers for obtaining as thorough an 
education as her brother, and she will there- 
fore no longer be the subdued partner to her 
husband and merely the head servant in his 
home. She will have rights and freedom such 
as her grandmother could never have imagined 
in her dreams. There will be a single standard 
of morality for both men and women, as the 
discriminations of the law will gradually be 
removed from the legal codes. Instead of being 
ground up in the mills of industry, she will have 
proper protection in the home and outside of it. 
She will take the leading part in such cultural 
subjects as music, and will be a power in litera- 
ture and the other arts. The franchise will be 
hers, and by means of this she will help the 
men in guiding the ship of state towards the 
haven of highest success. Finally, she will be 
the very heart and soul of the social world. 
But to attain fully to this exalted position, she 
will doubtlessly have to make many more sacri- 
fices in the cause of renovating and elevating 
society. 

Because the Japanese woman in the recent 


The New Japanese Woman 153 


past has been at least partially successful in 
various hard struggles against an unfavorable 
environment, some of the elements in this long 
list of hopes are already in her possession. She 
is by nature brilliant of intellect, wise, and con- 
servative and will therefore not be tempted to 
advance so fast that a reaction will inevitably 
result. She knows her own weaknesses, and 
takes great pains to remove these. Physically 
she is not very vigorous and often lacks the 
genki, or “pep,” needed to make her life more 
joyous. That the younger members of her sex 
are fully aware of their needs in this direction, 
may be seen by the remarkable enthusiasm with 
which they enter all forms of modern athletics. 
Statistics show that during the past forty years, 
the average height of the women has been de- 
cidedly increased. 

Similar preparations for woman’s larger field 
of usefulness are also made along other lines. 
The Women’s Federation has established lec- 
ture courses on the Japanese Constitution, civil 
and criminal law, economics, sociology, and the 
history of the development of woman’s rights. 
These lectures have been delivered by profes- 
sors from Meiji University and by other au- 


154 The New Japanese Womanhood 


thorities. The Federation has also launched 
a movement looking towards the establishment 
of a woman’s university of first rank. Thus 
far only one woman has ever received a regular 
degree from an Imperial university. 

The leaders of the feminist movement fully 
appreciate the fact that an extremely heavy re- 
sponsibility rests upon the women of to-day. 
Full credit is also due them because with a very 
few exceptions they have not been carried away 
by either a wild radicalism or a cheap sentimen- 
talism. They know very well that their highest 
object can only be attained if they count the 
best and most intelligent men not as their ene- 
mies but as friends who will soon extend 
helping hands. Consequently, the wisest among 
the new Japanese women consistently advocate 
practical, common sense education along all 
lines as the only sufficient means to effect a 
thorough preparation for the new epoch upon 
which they are entering. 

In order to form as concrete an idea as pos- 
sible of what the women of the new age will be 
like, it may be helpful, even at the risk of some 
repetition, to take a quick but discerning glance 
at the work of a few of the women who are al- 


The New Japanese Woman 155 


ready living the life of the new world. The 
list of leaders given here is by no means ex- 
haustive, as it could be multiplied many times. 

Madame Kaji Yajima was one of the best 
loved women in Japan. A lady of sterling 
character, she was for thirty years president 
of the National W.C.T.U. She worked inces- 
santly for education, purity, peace and temper- 
ance, and was profoundly interested in all en- 
deavors to elevate women and men. At the 
age of eighty-nine she attended the Washing- 
ton Disarmament Conference and presented to 
President Harding a peace resolution signed 
by 10,000 women of Japan. 

Miss Micht Kawat, a graduate of Bryn 
Mawr College, is general secretary of the Na- 
tional Y. W. C. A. She is an indefatigable 
worker among women students and the many 
thousands of factory girls. A recognized social 
reformer and a born leader, she is known from 
one end of the Empire to the other as a woman 
of deep religious conviction. 

Mrs. Motoko Hani is a modern educator of 
women, the editor of the well-known monthly 
magazine, “The Woman’s Companion,’ and 
is herself a writer of exceptional ability. 


156 The New Japanese Womanhood 


She desires the women of Japan to be able to 
stand on their own feet, to have backbone, and 
to develop personality of the highest order. 
She holds that only as young women have real 
worth of character and practical ability as 
mothers or workers, will they be able to attain 
to the freedom that is due them. 

Madame Asako Hirooka, a member of the 
wealthy Mitsui family, has shown modern 
Japan that a woman can establish a bank and 
conduct it successfully. She made money hon- 
estly, controlled it wisely, and used it for the 
good of society. She was an active member 
of the Christian Church, and, though busied 
with commercial pursuits, she often found time 
to go around the country on preaching tours. 
Wherever she went, she made a definite at- 
tempt to elevate the conditions of her fellow- 
women. 

Madame Akiko Yosano, the wife of a univer- 
sity professor and mother of a large family 
of children, is the most prominent living woman 
writer of Japan. She belongs to the realistic 
school, and writes both prose and poetry. She 
wants woman freed from her ancient shackles 


The New Japanese Woman 157 


and prepared to occupy a respected place in 
politics and society. 

Miss Ritsuko Mori, a highly cultured lady, 
educated in Japan and in the Occident, is the 
best actress on the Japanese stage. She desires 
to portray on the stage the life of the real 
Japanese woman not merely the stilted activi- 
ties of the puppet-like female of the old style 
theater, whose parts were acted by men. 

Mrs. Shinko Kodama is a progressive leader 
in the Federation of Women. Her aims are: 
woman’s suffrage, protection for motherhood, 
and repealing of all laws discriminating against 
women. She believes that the ballot in the 
hands of the women of Japan will correct alll 
conditions in which women are now being 
wronged. 

Baroness Ishimoto is a cultured, patriotic 
lady who is a sincere believer in birth-control 
as the effective means by which Japan can se- 
cure permanent peace, a higher form of civili- 
zation, and greater happiness for both men and 
women. 

Madame Tamaki Miura, Japan’s only truly 
great performer on the operatic stage, has 
achieved a world-wide fame by her singing. 


158 The New Japanese Womanhood 


She has not only opened a new door to great- 
ness for the talented Japanese woman, but she 
has proved to the world in a new way that the 
deepest feelings of the human soul make a uni- 
versal appeal, irrespective of race or culture. 

Mrs. Yayot Yoshioka, the founder of the 
Tokyo Woman’s Medical School, has bestowed 
an unspeakable blessing upon her fellow-women 
by establishing a woman’s medical institution. 
The government has appropriately recognized 
the value of her efforts by granting the school 
the right to confer degrees on its graduates. 

It will be noticed that the first four women 
of this list have done their reform work as 
active Christians. When the history of the 
woman’s movement in Japan will be written, the 
honest historian will give a large place to the 
Christian women for the faithful and incessant 
upward pull which they have contributed. They 
have all been conservatively progressive, not 
one of them destructively radical. The remain- 
ing six women of the list are probably not mem- 
bers of a church, but they also, in countless and 
telling ways, are putting their shoulders to the 
load and are vigorously pushing forward to- 


The New Japanese Woman 159 


wards a freer, happier and more efficient 
womanhood. 

We have seen that some Japanese men and 
a minority of Japanese women have clearly be- 
held the vision of a new Japanese womanhood. 
This minority of women includes a few mem- 
bers of the nobility, a rather large number of 
the middle class educated women, and perhaps 
a still larger number of representatives from 
the industrial and commercial groups. These 
people did not by their agitation create the new 
age in Japan—the industrial revolution and the 
whole new world of ideas have produced this 
changed order of things. What the leaders of 
the woman’s movement are endeavoring to do 
is to adjust themselves and society to the de- 
mands of the new condition, in order that they 
may survive, and if possible, help to give im- 
petus and guidance to the social evolution that 
is going on. They have already succeeded in 
their object to a considerable degree. This ad- 
justment will surely be completed sooner or 
later, for Japan is fully aware that a bird can- 
not fly with one strong wing and the feathers 
of the other wing clipped. 

Japan will not merely imitate what other 


160 The New Japanese Womanhood 


countries have done in the matter but will settle 
this question in her own way, as that is the only 
self-respecting position for her to assume. She 
has solved many other difficult problems with 
marked success, and she will also be able to 
make the required adjustment in her woman 
problem. It is now quite impossible for Japan 
to sidestep this subject of fundamental impor- 
tance, for she has entered the maelstrom of in- 
dustrialism and the world of science to such an 
extent that she cannot and will not turn back 
again to the former conditions. She can be 
trusted to deal with her women in ways which 
fully conform to the requirements of the high- 
est enlightenment. 

The social development of Japan and her 
women affords another proof that the human 
race is fundamentally one in its deepest long- 
ings and highest aspirations; that the outward 
differences which do exist have had their origin 
in the diverse surroundings among which a 
particular society has been evolved, and that 
when a social group is placed under conditions 
similar to those of any other people, like char- 
acteristics will inevitably appear. 


The New Japanese Woman 161 


In the foregoing chapters the writer has 
made an honest effort to set forth frankly but 
sympathetically the numerous perplexing ele- 
ments constituting Japan’s woman problem as 
well as the promising outlook for a happy solu- 
tion of these important matters in the not dis- 
tant future. He sincerely hopes that as a re- 
sult of this little endeavor some of his Ameri- 
can countrymen may understand these difficul- 
ties more clearly and may increasingly show a 
genuine fellow-feeling towards their progres- 
sive neighbor across the Pacific. 


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BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Miss Alice Mabel Bacon: 
Japanese Girls and Women. 
Dr. Basil Chamberlain: 
Things Japanese. 
Christian Movement in Japan, 1923, 1925. 
Civil and Criminal Codes of Japan. 
Dr. Charlotte B. DeForest: 
The Leaven in Japan. 
Rev. William Hugh Erskine: 
Japanese Customs. 
Lafcadio Hearn: 
Japan, An Interpretation. 
Professor Hozumi: 
Law and Ancestor-Worship. 
Official Government Gazette of Japan. 
Mr. Katayama: 
Fujin Horitsu (Woman’s Law). 
William E. Lampe, Ph.D.: 
The Japanese Social Organization. 
Dr. Arthur Lloyd: 
Everyday Japan. 
Magazines: 
Current History, 1925. 
Fujin no Tomo (‘Woman’s Companion), 1924, 1925. 
Shu-Fujin no Tomo (Housewives’ Companion), 
1924, 1925. 
The Japan Christian Quarterly, 1926. 
The Japan Evangelist, 1924, 1925. 
Fujin Sekai (Woman’s World), 1924, 1925. 
Dr. J. P. Moore: 
Forty Years in Japan. 
163 


164. The New Japanese Womanhood 


Dr. Christopher Noss: 

Tohoku, the Scotland of Japan. 
Newspapers: 

Japan Advertiser. 

Japan Times. 

Osaka Asahi. 

Sendai Kahoku Shimpo. 

Tokyo Asahi. 

Tokyo Yomiuri. 

Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
The Japan Year-Book, 1923, 1924. 
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. 








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